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)
“Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“Man is naturally a political animal.”
— Aristotle, Politics: A Treatise on Government
“Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.”
— Dhammapada, The Dhammapada
“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)
“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, or Life in the Woods
“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
“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
“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 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.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
“Men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”
— Machiavelli, The Prince
“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
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”
— 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
“Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, dew, a bubble. A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud - thus we should look upon the world.”
— Diamond Sutra, Buddhist Mahayana Texts: Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra, Sukhavativyuha (SBE XLIX)
“I myself am able to come out from the burning house through the door, quickly and safely... but my children, those young boys, are staying in the burning house, playing, amusing, and diverting themselves with all sorts of sports.”
— Lotus Sutra, The Saddharma-Pundarika (Lotus of the True Law, SBE XXI)
“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss.”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“Whiles into One do all through Love unite; Whiles too the same are rent through hate of Strife.”
— Empedocles, The fragments of Empedocles;
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
— Bible, The Holy Bible (King James Version)