The Laws of Human Nature quotes

“Greene's premise is that we like to imagine ourselves as rational, conscious agents who choose our actions freely.”

“Greene's first law confronts the most flattering illusion we hold about ourselves: that we are rational.”

“Everyone, Greene argues, begins life in a state of total self-absorption and never entirely leaves it.”

“Greene's third law holds that everyone wears a social mask — a carefully managed presentation designed to project the image they want others to accept.”

“People do not change their fundamental nature nearly as easily as their words or their apologies suggest.”

“Presence and over-familiarity dull attraction, while absence and a hint of the unattainable inflame it.”

“The mind evolved to respond to present dangers and quick rewards, not to weigh slow-moving forces or distant consequences.”

“Greene's seventh law begins with a simple observation about why people are so hard to persuade: everyone carries a self-image they are determined to protect.”

“Two people can meet the same setback; one is crushed and embittered, the other learns and grows.”

“The trouble is that repression does not eliminate the shadow; it only drives it underground, where it grows stronger and leaks out in distorted forms.”

“Of all the emotions that move people, envy is among the most powerful and the most hidden.”

“Praise, achievement, and the deference of others inflate the ego, and slowly we come to believe in our own greatness.”