“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: 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. All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes." by Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde photo
Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

Sarah Dessen photo
Mark Rothko photo

“One does not paint for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in human terms is the only thing that is really satisfactory to the artist.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

in conversation with W.C. Seitz
Quote of Rothko in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 116
after 1970, posthumous

Haruki Murakami photo
John McCarthy photo

“It's difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really 'knows', 'thinks', etc., because we're hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fish understands swimming.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

" The Little Thoughts of Thinking Machines http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/little.html", Psychology Today, December 1983, pp. 46–49. Reprinted in Formalizing Common Sense: Papers By John McCarthy, 1990, ISBN 0893915351
1980s

Swami Vivekananda photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo

Related topics