Popular quotes about Beings! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 20
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
Kurt VonnegutI do believe deeply that all human beings, male and female, are sexual beings, most likely bisexual beings channeled this way and that by cultures terrified of boundary crossings without passports stamped gay or straight.
Robin MorganIf we turn away from our sexual passion, then we freeze and beings are harmed. If we grab it, then we are burned and beings are harmed. But if we just stay close to it, walk around it, always in touch with the fact that we are sexual beings, neither identifying with nor distancing ourselves from our sexuality, then we gradually become intimate with it.
Reb AndersonA person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.
Desmond TutuEvolution created a violent order where beings eat other beings. Till we change this order and create a harmony between all beings, there shall be no real peace on Earth.
Mehmet Murat IldanIt is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die." His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
Douglas AdamsThere are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.
Margaret AtwoodAll beings are by nature are Buddhas, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddhas.
Hakuin EkakuIn film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.
Nathaniel DorskyI was deeply interested in conveying what is a deeply felt conviction of my own. This is simply to suggest that human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake.
Rod SerlingHuman beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair oboots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model.
John Stuart MillThe Seascapes are before human beings and after human beings. The Seascapes were there before our presence, and when our civilization is over, seascapes will still exist. Our presence is temporary. Civilization is only 5,000 to 6,000 years. The history of ours, the material history of consciousness, is rather short.
Hiroshi SugimotoAll human beings have a right to life. Our unborn children are members of the human race. They're human beings, so they have a right to life.
Peter KreeftLook round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.
David HumeI maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. ... We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.
John EcclesAll living beings, things that move, are equally important, whether they are human beings, dogs, birds, fish, trees, ants, weeds, rivers, wind or rain. To stay healthy and strong, life must have clean air, clear water and pure food. If deprived of these things, life will cycle to the next level, or as the system says, 'die'.
John AfricaThe characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.
Michael CrichtonHuman beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase.
Salman RushdieHuman beings were human beings anatomically for several hundred thousand years, wandering around, hunting and gathering. And then suddenly, at the same time they started painting in caves they started multiplying.
Howard RheingoldHuman beings are empowered to exercise dominion over nature and even to be participants in creation; and yet, at the same time, there are strictures against idolatry, which is a kind of overreaching and confusing human beings' role with God's.
Michael SandelThere is a double rhythm in all human beings. We are binary beings - two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears. Two legs for walking. And the heartbeat thumping in our chest mirrors that.
Paul AusterI don't think there's one right way to do anything. There's no one best way to be a woman. There's no best way to be a mentor. I'm just trying to be me and be authentic and live my truth and be as inclusive and interested in other human beings as possible. I'm an actor by training, which means that I study human beings and human behavior. That's what I try to do and what I love to do.
Elizabeth BanksWhen the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
Howard ZinnIf you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. Itโs a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.
Gary L. FrancioneIt's not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it - who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet - that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple.
Charlie MungerStill I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.
Elie WieselBeings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.
Gautama BuddhaFor, owners of their deeds (karma) are the beings, heirs of their deeds; their deeds are the womb from which they sprang; with their deeds they are bound up; their deeds are their refuge. Whatever deeds they do-good or evil-of such they will be the heirs. And wherever the beings spring into existence, there their deeds will ripen; and wherever their deeds ripen, there they will earn the fruits of those deeds, be it in this life, or be it in the next life, or be it in any other future life.
Gautama BuddhaFrom this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good.
Morarji DesaiWhether you have a Ph.D., or no D, we're in this bag together. And whether you're from Morehouse or Nohouse, we're still in this bag together. Not to fight to try to liberate ourselves from the men - this is another trick to get us fighting among ourselves - but to work together with the black man, then we will have a better chance to just act as human beings, and to be treated as human beings in our sick society.
Fannie Lou Hamer...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?
Peter SingerThose social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.
Margaret MeadFeminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being.
Erica JongWe were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.
Haruki MurakamiI support [FRAME's] objectives, largely because I do not believe that results of tests conducted on animals will be neccessarily relevant to human beings.
Ian JenkinsAnd then Serafina understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence. That was how these creatures looked now, these beautiful pilgrims of rarefied light, standing around the girl with the dirty-face and the tartan skirt and the boy with the wounded hand who was frowning in his sleep.
Philip PullmanWe have to reformulate moral standards. Human beings have to impose limits on themselves when it comes to their actions and desires. There is a beautiful and very radical notion in the bible: Man is made in the image of God, no matter how sick, poor or damaged he is. We should try to transpose this maxim to our secular and constitutional self-image.
Gotz AlyBeing empowered includes developing the powerful qualities that lead human beings to cultivate wellness and healing. And those are the same qualities that enhance all relationships on earth and reduce stress (which seems to be the largest precursor to disease)-gentle ness, calmness, patience, humility, compassion, and gratitude.
Bryan KestEver since human beings learned to talk to each other, we've been fascinated with storytelling of every kind. Blessed (or cursed) with insatiable curiosity, we have to know what happens next.
Lloyd Alexander... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film.
Paul VirilioIt is remarkable indeed how we human beings are capable of delighting in the mating call of a flower while we are surrounded by the charred carcasses of our fellow animals.
Mohsin HamidA thirst for the infinite is indelibly present in human beings. Man was created to have a relationship with God; we need him.
Pope Benedict XVIWhat borders on the criminal is the poor teaching and neglect of those subjects that deal with the history of ideas and ideals, a knowledge of which is essential to all youth who would assume their place in society as thinking, feeling human beings.
John Mortimer Smith