All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. The Fall
Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted. The Fall
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
Mankind is a rope tied between beast and superman'a rope over an abyss. Zarathustra, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, "Prologue," section 4 (1883).
More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure. Notebooks 1935-1942 (1962), March 1940 entry
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Thee. Devotions XVII
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none More wonderful than man. Antigone
O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall? Purgatorio, Canto XII, line 95
There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. Rambler #60 (October 13, 1750)