Eighty per cent of mankind is stuff to fill graves with.
~ Ford Madox Ford, in Esquire magazine, August 1966
Among the people there are killers who have not yet shed blood, and thieves who have stolen nothing, and liars who have so far told the truth.
~ Kahlil Gibran
Man’s nature is made up of four elements, which produce in him four attributes, namely, the beastly, the brutal, the satanic, and the divine. In man there is something of the pig, the dog, the devil, and the saint.
~ Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, in The Main Problems of Abu Nasr Al-Paraba
I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being–that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.
~ Mark Twain, in Harper Magazine, Sept. 1899
Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time his is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the “noblest work of God.”
~ Mark Twain, in Letters from the Earth