Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who bears no similarity to humans either in shape or thought... but humans believe that the gods are born like themselves, and that the gods wear clothes and have bodies like humans and speak in the same way... but if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with the hands and manufacture the things humans can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and they would make the gods' bodies resemble those which each kind of animal had itself.
XenophanesVery close cousins like humans and chimps have almost all their genes in common. Slightly less close cousins like humans and monkeys still have recognizably the same genes. You could carry on right on down to humans and bacteria, and you will find continuous compelling evidence for the hierarchical tree of cousinship.
Richard DawkinsShallow ecology is anthropocentric, or human-centred. It views humans as above or outside nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or 'use', value to nature. Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It does see the world not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all human beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life.
Fritjof CapraVeganism can resurrect Eden and create heaven on Earth. We can have a place where humans view animals in awe, and animals view humans with a curious aloofness.
Gary YourofskyHumans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.
Howard RheingoldThe differences you perceive between Humans-between groups of Humans-are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments
Octavia ButlerI've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
Richard StallmanEvery generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality ?
Scott AdamsI woke up and was walking on a mountain, and I thought, "What's the worst thing that humans could do to the planet? Make it uninhabitable for humans and kill wildlife."
Eyvind KangDo what's good for humans, modeled on how humans already do things; ignore what's convenient for computers.
Stewart BrandHere we also see: what this divinity lacks is not only a sense of shame-and there are also other reasons for conjecturing that in several respects all of the gods could learn from us humans. We humans are-more humane.
Friedrich NietzscheThe theory of animal rights simply is not consistent with the theory of animal welfare... Animal rights means dramatic social changes for humans and non-humans alike; if our bourgeois values prevent us from accepting those changes, then we have no right to call ourselves advocates of animal rights.
Gary L. FrancioneHumans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.
Richard DawkinsWe laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and thatโs what itโs become, of being different.
David IckeOne shouldn't be afraid of the humans. Well, I am not afraid of the humans, but of what is inhuman in them.
Ivo AndricI saw many humans on whom there were no clothes. I saw many clothes in which there were no humans.
RumiIn the past, humans hesitated when they took lives, even non-human lives. But society had changed, and they no longer felt that way. As humans grew stronger, I think that we became quite arrogant, losing the sorrow of 'we have no other choice.' I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures.
Hayao MiyazakiA humanโs love. I couldnโt wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humansโฆhumans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)
Sherrilyn KenyonMost 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 SteinbeckHumans abhor a vacuum. The immediate filling of a vacuum is one of the basic functions of speech. Meaningless conversations are no less important in our lives than meaningful ones.
Lidiya GinzburgWe shall never understand peace, justice and the living of life until we recognize that all people are human and that humans are the most precious things on earth.
Wally HickelI have learned the hard way to mind my business, without judging who people are and what they do. I am more troubled by the lack of space being provided for the truth to unfold. Humans cannot seem to wait for or honor the truth. Instead, we make it up based on who we believe people should or should not be.
Iyanla VanzantTo survive, humans will work together. Accept each other. For a moment, we are all equal. Backs against the wall, human beings are at their finest.
Daniel H. WilsonI can watch endless humans get killed, but if I see a movie and they kill a dog, I practically want to walk out.
Kristin Bauer van StratenAt issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be sure.
Barbara EhrenreichThe 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 FowlerHumans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.
Jonathan Safran Foer[About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to.
Carl SafinaIt is man's intrinsic and irreducible self-responsibility to humanize himself, to exercise his entire range of rational and moral resources to raise his mode of being and seeing and acting above not just that of animals, but also above that of the majority of subhuman (never to be self-realized) humans who will never draw themselves into a self-punishing position of focal self-diagnosis and self-accountability.
Kenny SmithAnd in the end, we were all just humans...Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.
F. Scott FitzgeraldEven very smart people can try to shoehorn new information that just doesn't fit into an existing paradigm.For a long time the story that we've been telling ourselves is that humans are just another animal. We evolved from other animals and our place in the universe isn't particularly special. What I'm trying to convey in my book [The Sixth Extinction] is that we are unusual.
Elizabeth KolbertWhen we, hijras, started our activism, we had to tell people, "We exist, we are humans. Please give us nothing but our basic dignity." The biggest misery in the world, I believe, is the feeling of being unloved, and that this community faces a lot. You're not even considered to be human. You're considered transparent. We were ignored until we started organizing, when HIV first became a factor. Even in the HIV world, people could not believe that hijras have sex. And then also we were put in the category of men having sex with men, the gay community.
Laxmi Narayan TripathiBecause 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 AquinasYou do not have to marry in order not to be alone- all you need not to be alone is to have some other humans to be your companions and close friends.
Myles MunroeHumans are incapable of securely storing high-quality cryptographic keys, and they have unacceptable speed and accuracy when performing cryptographic operations. (They are also large, expensive to maintain, difficult to manage, and they pollute the environment. It is astonishing that these devices continue to be manufactured and deployed. But they are sufficiently pervasive that we must design our protocols around their limitations.)
Charlie KaufmanHumans are the reproductive organs of technology. We multiply manufactured artifacts and spread ideas and memes.
Kevin KellyThe problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans.
Beatrix of the NetherlandsHumans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.
Katherine ApplegateI feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.
Ellen HopkinsShe leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on.
Markus ZusakWe frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
Mairead CorriganOur ability to turn off empathy for specific kinds of humans and then use faulty logic to justify our beliefs is messily sociopathic.
Eden Robinson