George Savile Quotes

My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

Human beings do things for a reason, even if sometimes it's the wrong reason.

I think the human mind is fascinating. I love figuring out why people are doing what they do.

Learning about the way people process information and their emotions is hugely helpful to my work.

Motives are often more important than actions

Most people when they come after you for advice come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

Human nature is a scoundrel's favorite explanation.

People sometimes forget when you remember, but they always remember when you forget.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal.

It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.

People didn't change. they liked what they liked even if they didn't understand why.

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp itsseat, and rule in its stead.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

People look like rivers very much: water is everywhere the same, but the rivers are narrow, fast, wide, pure, cold, muddy and warm. The people are the same. They have the rudiment of every human habit in them and they behave according to them. Sometimes they even do not look like themselves, but they still stay whatever they are.

We have lost confidence in reason because we have learned that man is chiefly a creature of habit and emotion.

You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.

How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind?... I think that these behavioral economics...or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology.

It is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Why do we remember the past, but not the future?

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.