Understanding Human Nature Quotes

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

When people came to Christ accusing a person of doing wrong, the Master could not think of anything else but forgiveness. For he did not see in the wrongdoer what the others saw. To distinguish between right and wrong is not the work of an ordinary mind, and the curious thing is that the more ignorant a person is, the more ready he is to do so.

I think the secret is really observation. Well, if you observe what's going on and try to figure out how people are thinking, I think you can always write something that people will understand.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

My mother understood human nature better and never chided. She knew that a man cannot be saved from his own foolishness or vice by someone else's efforts or protests, but only by the use of his own will.

Over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't. And I observe a lot. I see a lot around me. And over time you also get to understand the nature of man and the environments you are dealing with, and you can't always allow emotions and temper to flare up because you're displeased with something, or you want to change it.

I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.

But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.

I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man's heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely

Secret of my success was to have ambition and know minds of men.

To have influence, you really don't need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.

When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.

Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

There ought to be some sign in a book about man, that the writer knows thoroughly one man at least.

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair

I couldn't be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.

You must have - besides intuition and sensitivity - a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know life - bastards included - and it takes a bit of one to know one, don't you think?

We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.

I often play women who are not essentially good or likable, and I often go through a stage where I hate them. Then I end up loving and defending them.

I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."

It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

I'm convinced we all are voyeurs. It's part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There's an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do? It's a gaining of some sort of knowledge, I think.

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.