Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions.
Wendell BerryPeople can't live with themselves much longer. The planet cannot live with humans much longer! We have the weaponry, destruction of the planet, pollution, destruction of forests, countless manifestations of humans using their intelligence in the service of the dysfunction, the madness. It's a strange juxtaposition. Humans are intelligent, but if you look at history or even watch TV, they're also incredibly stupid.
Eckhart TolleHumans cannot reject temptation. When they are plunged into the depths of despair, likened to hell, they will hold on to anything that may help them escape from the situation they are in, even if it's merely a spider's thread, no matter what sort of humans they are.
Yana TobosoHumans, like all other creatures, must make a difference; otherwise, they cannot live. But unlike other creatures, humans must make a choice as to the kind and scale of difference they make. If they choose to make too small a difference, they diminish their humanity. If they choose to make too great a difference, they diminish nature, and narrow their subsequent choices; ultimately, they diminish or destroy themselves. Nature, then, is not only our source but also our limit and measure.
Wendell BerryKubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution.
Marvin MinskyThe Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.
Isaac AsimovI'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 StallmanWhen you let God be God you can let humans be humans. When we place God in His rightful place in our lives, we don't struggle so much when human relationships let us down.
Joshua HarrisThere is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for the young are not produced by reasoning, but by feeling, and this faculty exists not only in humans but in most living beings.
MaimonidesNovelsโand memoirsโare perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is only one kind of novel: a human attempt to transfer or convey some part or version of their world of noumenon to anotherโs world of noumenon.
Tao LinYou know, whether it be humans or animals. So even humans - before we can speak or we can understand a baby's cognition - they're already showing us signs that they want choice.
Sheena IyengarFor the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state.
AristotleThe difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
Friedrich DurrenmattThe animals certainly like to be close to humans, especially as humans go through the shift in consciousness.
Eckhart TolleWe'll continue to see more and more brands integrate social causes, charitable components and environmental issues as underlying themes to their campaigns and messaging. Humans connect with humans after all, and brands are using this as a point of connection to engage with their audience, especially charity-minded Generation Y.
Amy Jo Martin... this idea, that humans are essentially weak creatures, is actually deeply woven into a lot of the ways in which humans think about our bodies.
Daniel LiebermanRegardless of what the object of design is, humans need design. For anything humans use in their day to day life, they need design and it is a clear and concrete proof of the fundamental human right to live.
Kenji EkuanTo say that humans are composed of machines is not to say that we are merely machines. Humans are dignified machines. We are (so far) the most extropic, most complex product of billions of years of evolution.
Max MoreThen there is that other appeal, the stronger one, of spending, during certain parts of the year, a ten- or twelve- hour working day with bees, which are, when all is said and done, simply a bunch of bugs. But spending my days in close and intimate contact with creatures who are structured so differently from humans, and who get on with life in such a different way, is like being a visitor in an alien but ineffably engaging world.
Sue HubbellAt 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 EhrenreichThere are only so many instruments you can layer on top of each other that aren't perfectly electronically programmed. "Long Vermont Roads" just cannot be performed live, because it's just too cluttered if it's played by humans. Synthesizers stay out of each other's way in a way that hand-played instruments never can.
Stephin MerrittNever before have humans been so ambitious, have they thought that they could be much more than their parents were.
Theodore ZeldinRitual is one of the ways in which humans put their lives in perspective, whether it be Purim, Advent, or drawing down the moon. Ritual calls together the shades and specters in people's lives, sorts them out, puts them to rest.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesHumans are such creatures of habit that once they get us in all this debt that we accumulate from going college that we have to work it off for the rest of our lives.
Asher RothOnce 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 MorrisLearn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.
David BrinIf a potato can produce vitamin C, why can't we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No point asking. Nobody knows.
Bill BrysonI don't have paparazzi following me. Because I'm a human character, it's different. The vampires get a lot of attention, and then the werewolves, and then the humans. It hasn't really changed that much for me.
Tinsel KoreyI believe that our distant nomadic ancestors came forward and survived because they could hear distant, faint birdsong as an acoustic navigational beacon, if you will, and by moving toward the birdsong, they were able to find places with shelter, food, and water, and a prosperous growing region. Indeed, birdsong is the number one indicator of habitats prosperous to humans.
Gordon HemptonIf you let hydrogen gas alone for 13 billion years it will become giraffes, rose bushes and humans.
Brian SwimmeEven 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 KolbertWe learn to be right and to make everyone else wrong. The need to be right is the result of trying to protects the image we want to project to the outside. We have to impose our way of thinking, not just onto other humans, but even upon ourselves.
Miguel Angel RuizLooking around the world at these wildlife, it's abundantly clear that humans have benefited from nature in so many ways but have also brought many species to the brink of extinction...The American people that I interact with through my IS Foundation work do not want to allow this to happen; they do not want to let these species go without a fight; and they see the way in which nature provides for people around the world.
Ian SomerhalderOur bones, flesh and blood are made up of the metals, liquids and minerals of the earth and everything on this planet is made up of the same things. As humans we have being, so everything on the earth does too in our culture, because we are made of the same thing.
John TrudellGo to the tea shop anywhere along the Ganga, sir, and look at the men working in that tea shop - men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans in crushed uniforms, sluggish, unshaven, in their thirties or forties or fifties but still "boys." But that is your fate if you do your job well - with honesty, dedication, and sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it, no doubt.
Aravind AdigaPrints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.
Kiki SmithI believe that pity is a law like justice, and that kindness is a duty like uprightness. That which is weak has a right to the kindness and pity of that which is strong. In the relations of man with the animals...there is a great ethic, scarcely perceived as yet, which will at length break through into the light, and which will be the corollary and the complement to humans ethics. Are there not here unsounded depths for the thinker? Is one to think oneself mad because one has the sentiment of universal pity in one's heart?
Victor HugoTo think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)
Wendell BerryIn the same way humans have domesticated sheep and other animals by murdering the strong ones and breeding the docile, obedient ones, the powers-that-be have done the same with the masses.
Gary YourofskyThe 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 ApplegateRecent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change.
Judith CurryI think the primary gift of the animal is offered to writer and non-writer alike; they teach us about love, or attunement, which is love in action. A lot of people have closer relationships with animals than they do with other humans, because real intimacy requires both parties to consistently lean in, and animals are so good at this. They remain consistently, amazingly attuned to us, even when we fail them, and so we stay present, because we sense we're safe.
C.E. MorganMyths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it.
Michael ShermerIt is astonishing how foolish humans can be in groups, especially when they follow their leader without question.
Brian HerbertI often reflect on what an extraordinary time (pun intended) it is to be alive here in the beginning of the twenty-first century. It took life billions of years to get to this point. It took humans thousands of years to piece together a meaningful understanding of our cosmos, our planet and ourselves. Think how fortunate we are to know this much. But think also of all that's yet to be discovered. Here's hoping the deep answers to the deep questions-from the nature of consciousness to the origin of life-will be found in not too much more time.
Bill Nye