"All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things."

Southey, Robert on deception
6 fans of this quote   

"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result."

Wilde, Oscar on nature
8 fans of this quote   

"The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute."

Vico, Giambattista on nature   

"Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the truth, bending over backward, lying down on the job, sidestepping responsibility and pushing their luck."

Unknown, Source on nature
4 fans of this quote   

"The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure."

Hesse, Hermann on nature   

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

Einstein, Albert on nature
39 fans of this quote   

"The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception."

Carlyle, Thomas on laughter
3 fans of this quote   

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."

Orwell, George on nationalities and nationalism
6 fans of this quote   

"Men are gentle, honest and straightforward. Women are convoluted, deceptive and dangerous."

Pizzey, Erin on women   

"Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man -- weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded!"

Custine, Marquis De on grace   

"Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't --it's human."

Erasmus, Desiderius on nature
4 fans of this quote   

"Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art."

Woolf, Virginia on nature