Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.
Ray KurzweilHumans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology.
David SuzukiMany dogs can understand almost every word humans say, while humans seldom learn to recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that. And barks are only a small part of the dog language. A wagging tail can mean so many things. Humans know that it means a dog is pleased, but not what a dog is saying about his pleasedness.
Dodie Smithyou 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 MurakamiOne difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.
E. O. WilsonI think that as people and as humans, our social pattern is to always run away from problems... as humans in general.
Cristian MachadoWeโre turning everything on the planet into food for humans so weโre cutting down the rainforests, displacing all of the animals, and weโre doing all this to feed humans... ... Imagine if there were only 2 billion people polluting? Weโre already overpopulated. I feel weโve become a parasite on this planet. If this population keeps growing, weโll just keep devouring the planet, and I donโt think itโs going to stand for that very long.
Morgan FreemanMy view of ethics and of its priority is connected to my view that we are fundamentally relational beings - both the product of human interactions, as well as committed as part of the expression of our own humanity to various social involvements. I see ethics as having two places in the maintenance of these relational activities - first as providing the basic coinage of our interactions qua humans and second as mediating the various roles we assume as humans.
John KleinigI'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 StallmanI call animals "guardians of Being," especially animals that live with humans. Because, for many humans, it's through their contact with animals they get in touch with that level of being.
Eckhart TolleSo, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.
John MarsdenA 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 ZusakIn 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 BringhurstHumans arenโt a protected class. (Acheron) Really? (Jaden) Yeah. Savitar shares your โall humans are verminโ mind set. (Savitar)
Sherrilyn KenyonThe difference between humans and wild animals is that humans pray before they commit murder.
Friedrich DurrenmattHumans are particularly interesting; our culture is incredible, there's no doubt about that. In many respects, no other species matches ours. But in quite a few respects, they do, and that can help us, perhaps, to better understand our own culture. We look at the ways humans are similar to other animals, and at the ways they differ, rather than just saying, "We have culture and you don't."
Hal WhiteheadWar and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. "We've got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. "You know, the bird flu's good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine
Eric PiankaNo doubt, humans will do a lot of damage before we ultimately destroy ourselves. But life will continue without humans. New forms of intelligence will emerge long after this human experiment is over.
Zeena SchreckI 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 MiyazakiAs 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 CardTo keep people interested, your presentation needs to have contrast. As humans we process contrast. We are assessing "what's the same," "what's different," "what's like me," "what's not like me." Humans stay interested if they can process contrast. Varying types of contrast can be used. With content, you can contrast between what is and what could be or between your perspective and alternative perspectives.
Nancy DuarteBut the Courts aren't places humans are supposed to be, especially the Unseelie Court. Most faeries won't even go there." We have to go - we have to get Ravus's heart. He's going to die if we don't." what are we going to do? Go down there and ask for it?" Pretty much.
Holly BlackI gravitate towards places where humans have been and are no more, to the edge of man's influence, where the elements are taking over or covering man's traces.
Michael KennaAll animals go through interminable hard labor to produce what humans shamelessly rob from them at great physical/mental pain to them and to their young. THINK TWICE before using hot 'merchandise'!!!
Adela PopescuEssentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.
Robert M. SapolskyEinstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Stephen Jay GouldHumans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it.
Frederick Salomon PerlsWe 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 HickelHumans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
Carl SaganEveryone 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. ValenteI think what's fun of making a Transformers movie is that it gets to be all of the above. I think, thematically, this movie is ... because of the third movie, you can ask questions in this movie you couldn't ask in the previous films. Like I was referring to the fact that they were abandoned by humans in the previous film; their attitude is different, so we've been able to tackle different themes.
Lorenzo di BonaventuraAny act of violence creates resentment and resistance, because humans were meant to be free.
Bryant H. McGillIf we want to go to space with humans, that's for fun not for science. Human adventures in space are just sporting events.
Freeman DysonEverything 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 NewitzYou 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 MunroeI 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 HugoAfter a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-" "Okay, that was so not my fault-" "-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population." "I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans." "They smell bad when they're dead." "All you mortal types do.
J.R. WardIf the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.
Neil deGrasse TysonWestern artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.
Brice MardenHumans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.
Katherine ApplegateOf course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on?
Robert Winston