Human nature
“The condition of mere nature... is a condition of war of every man against every man.”
— Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)
“The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
— Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)
“The will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived.”
— Nietzsche, The Will to Power
“Man is naturally a political animal.”
— Aristotle, Politics A Treatise on Government
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one.”
— Locke, Second Treatise of Government
“Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.”
— Dhammapada, The Dhammapada
“Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses.”
— Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tzu Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer
“Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.”
— Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”
— Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales)
“White paper receives any characters.”
— Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
“Life is a business, the proceeds of which are very far from covering the cost of it.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 3 of 3)
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
“He is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”
— Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
“Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed.”
— Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales)
“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
— Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
“There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra A Book for All and None
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
“The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence.”
— Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
— Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete
“The direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life.”
— Plato, The Republic
“The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”
— Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
“Men are so simple, and yield so much to the present necessities, that he who hath a mind to deceive, shall always find another that will be deceived.”
— Machiavelli, Machiavelli, Volume I
“We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy
“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
— Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
“The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.”
— Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
“As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.”
— Dhammapada, The Dhammapada
“The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive.”
— Dhammapada, The Dhammapada
“Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come nigh unto me.”
— Dhammapada, The Dhammapada
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”
— Pascal, Pascal's Pensées
“All men seek happiness. This is without exception.”
— Pascal, Pascal's Pensées
“That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“The Value, or Worth of a man, is as of all other things, his Price.”
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan