Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It's not that humans and non-humans are identical... but the lack of understanding that led to the slave trade is the same lack of understanding many people have about animals today. When slaves were brought over from Africa, many people believed they were not humans, that they didn't have feelings. Many people believe that primates and other animals don't have feelings, too, but they do.
Jane GoodallThe show's writers had peppered the piece with words like "savage," "wild," and "animalistic." What bullshit. Show me the animal that kills for the thrill of watching something die. Why does the stereotype of the animalistic killer persist? Because humans like it. It neatly explains things for them, moving humans to the top of the evolutionary ladder and putting killers down among mythological man-beast monsters like werewolves. The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.
Kelley ArmstrongContrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.
Terry Pratchettyou mean machines are like humans?" I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further. With humans it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated.
Haruki MurakamiTrust me, little one. Everyone makes mistakes. Even the gods, and ours are much worse than those of humans. Unlike humans, we donโt suffer alone. Rather, we share the pain with thousands. Thatโs why you must learn to be like your father. To hold in your tears and anger. Try not to punish what you love. (Artemis)
Sherrilyn KenyonI think the Muslim religious is a little too tight. It doesn't fit humans. Humans can't possibly fit into it, so there are a lot of really unhappy people, terribly repressed. It is a religion that works against you because the template don't fit. It's not human, you know.
Jerry GarciaIt must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Terry PratchettA good zoo," Stella said, "is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don't hurt." She pauses, considering her words. "A good zoo is how humans make amends.
Katherine ApplegateAnd I specialize in fixing things up and restoring them to their former glory.โ She wondered if that talent extended to humans, maybe even humans who never really had a former glory.
Jill ShalvisI do subscribe to the 2012 theory, but regardless of the date, it's hard not to notice that humans are polluting the earth with humans, that soon it'll be difficult to get water to people and find land to grow food on. The infrastructures that hold up cities are going to be harder to maintain, and the resources that make it possible are going to be harder to find. I'm not even talking about oil; I'm talking about, like, steel.
Dan DeaconPerhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleontology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about, but that is heresy.
David PilbeamA human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.
Markus ZusakPlaces change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher - and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
Sylvia EarleChimpanzees are an evolutionary hair's-width from us.... Now imagine a species on Earth, or anywhere else, as smart compared with humans as humans are compared with chimpanzees. How much of the universe might they figure out?
Neil deGrasse TysonIn the native literatures of North America there aren't any novels. Instead, the major genre is myth. And myths are stories that are fundamentally about the world, not about human individuals. A myth needn't include any humans at all. If it does include them, they're usually minor characters - imaginary humans sent out like scouts to report back on what's happening in the mythworld, but not central participants in the action.
Robert BringhurstTo our human minds, computers behave less like rocks and trees than they do like humans, so we unconsciously treat them like people.... In other words, humans have special instincts that tell them how to behave around other sentient beings, and as soon as any object exhibits sufficient cognitive function, those instincts kick in and we react as though we were interacting with another sentient human being.
Alan CooperIt was not that I disliked people; some of them were interesting and kind. But even the nice ones were no more compelling or important to me than other creatures. Then, as now, to me humans are but one species among billions of other equally vivid and thrilling lives. I was never drawn to other children simply because they were human. Humans seemed to me a rather bullying species, and I was on the side of the underdog.
Sy MontgomeryThe only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.
Glen DuncanThings that raise your energy usually don't involve humans; things that cause energy loss usually involve humans.
Frederick LenzNothing is more important than saving ... the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.
James LeeAs Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.
Chris BohjalianThe Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong โ for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.
Orson Scott CardI just find that humans are predictable and stupid and animals and nature are a lot more magical to me. I'm just interested in magic, and not the silly humans.
Jason LytleWhy can't I solve this problem by killing someone? she though petulantly, then comforted herself with the mantra that had kept her going in prison: "Soon all the humans will be dead," she said, droning in the time-honored fashion of gurus everywhere. "And then Opal will be loved." And even if I'm not loved, she thought, at least all the humans will be dead.
Eoin ColferI sometimes say animals are closer to God than humans. They are closer to the source. The humans are more lost in the mind forms. Being is more obscured to the human because of the overlay of ego and mental formation.
Eckhart TolleI don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.
Karen HesseMost educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sunโs demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.
Martin ReesWhen a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.
John SteinbeckSooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.
Evo MoralesClassically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.
Eugene H. PetersonIf you are a card-carrying human being, chances are that you share the same fear as all other humans: the fear of losing love, respect and connection to others. And if you are human, in order to avoid or prevent the pain, trauma and perceived devastation of the loss, you will do anything to avoid your greatest fear from being visited on you.
Iyanla VanzantWith the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
Vilayanur S. RamachandranIn other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.
Paul WatsonEveryone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.
Catherynne M. ValenteNever believe that animals suffer less than humans. Pain is the same for them that it is for us. Even worse, because they cannot help themselves.
Louis J. CamutiI think people like to see the lives of artists that are legends. They always go through the dark periods and I think just as humans we like to see that and them coming out of it. I love those kinds of movies.
Kristen WiigThe quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we'll start thinking of doing something about it.
Jim FowlerOnce she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!" "What do you mean 'evil'?" Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people." "People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses.
Gerald MorrisWhen geologists announced the beginning of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, humans destroying the environment, one of the main things they pointed to is the use of plastics in the earth. We don't think about it, but it has a tremendous effect. But these are things you don't see right in front of your eyes. You need to think about them a little, to see what the consequences are. It's easy to put them aside, and the media don't talk about them.
Noam ChomskyWhen humans truly discover the power of love, it will prove more important than the harnessing of fire.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinIf you let hydrogen gas alone for 13 billion years it will become giraffes, rose bushes and humans.
Brian SwimmeBecause of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
Thomas AquinasEverything I had read in the fields of fiction and science led me to a single, dark conclusion. Humans are screwed, and so is our planet.
Annalee NewitzWater: 35 Liters. Carbon: 20 Kg. Ammonia: 4 Liters. Lime: 1.5 Kg. Phosphorus: 800 g. Salt: 250 g. Saltpeter: 100g. Sulfur: 80g. Fluorine: 7.5 g. Iron: 5 g. Silicon: 3 g. And 15 other elements in small quantities. That's the total chemical makeup of the average adult body. For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowance. Humans are pretty cheaply made.
Hiromu ArakawaThe cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.
Carl Sagan