Immanuel Kant Quotes

So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action.

I don't know that I am fascinated with crime. I'm fascinated with people and their characters and their obsessions and what they do. And these things lead to crime, but I'm much more fascinated in their minds.

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.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

No matter how bad the individual, everybody has reasons for why they do what they do.

I think acting and psychology are both looking at what makes human beings tick. I've always found that fascinating.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

I know myself - I cannot just play a cliche. It has to be a character; it has to be written with the complexity of the human being behind. Could be bad, could be good, could be someone we would hate, but still, I need a reason for that influence, and I need to understand why.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

I suppose one of the things that interest me about acting is unpicking what makes people tick and why they do what they do and what it means to be human.

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it.

In the Bible, there is absolutely no motivation for Judas, other than that he is sort of a 100 percent figure of evil. And it seemed to me that that was probably not the case.

There's something about trying to figure out why someone is doing something that on the outside is horrible - what drives them to do that? What could drive any human being to that kind of behaviour?

I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.

I still ponder what gets in people's minds and souls, why they do the things they do.

Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.

People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

Human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.

The motives even of our best actions will not always bear examination.

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

Villains are not fun for me to play, as such. But caricature-ish, intense behaviors that are based on real human traits are interesting. That makes an interesting story.

There is no knowing what is in a man's heart.