Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 6
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.
XenophanesContrary 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 PratchettIn mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesSo, 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 MarsdenWe'd thought that we were among the first humans to invade this basin, but humans had invaded everything, everywhere. They didn't have to walk into a place to invade it.
John MarsdenEvery 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 BrandHumans are humans. If somebody's mean to you, it's not gonna feel good - no matter if you're a man or a woman. I'm really proud to be a woman. I love that women can be feminine but also powerful. You know, free the nipple!
Bella HadidHumans 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 DawkinsAnatomically modern humans are found up to 200,000 years ago; behaviourally modern humans appear very recently in evolutionary time, as far as evidence now exists, perhaps within a window of 50-100,000 years ago, a flick of an eye in evolutionary time.
Noam ChomskyAlmost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!
Hayao MiyazakiFrom a distance, a clone's luminous eyes are meant to draw in humans and make them feel safe. Up close, the eyes appear hollow. Because of that, humans tend not to look into our eyes too closely, which I've been told is socially preferable, as eyes without souls behind them can be frightening.
Rachel CohnThe difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.
Ayn RandI 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 TolleSo the main question is not, Which humans brought about the death of Jesus but, What did the death of Jesus bring about for humans - including Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and nonreligious secularists - and all people everywhere?When it is all said and done, the most crucial question is: Why? Why did Christ suffer and die? Not why in the sense of cause, but why in the sense of purpose?
John PiperHumans build their societies around consumption of fossil water long buried in the earth, and these societies, being based on temporary resources, face the problem of being temporary themselves.
Charles BowdenSuddenly, we humans - a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature - have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power.
Paul MacCreadyHumans aren't defined by death, and they're not defined by what they lack. They're defined by their connections.
Dan WellsAt 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 EhrenreichHumans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
Carl SaganSince human good is what humans ought to pursue, the pursuit of interest to Aristotle is then such activity of soul, that which constitutes human good, namely activity that attains desiderata, where the attainment is in accord with virtue.
Ernest SosaThere 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 MerrittAccording to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness; the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in preserving nature, that preserving an endangered plant is valuable only if it benefits humans or other animals. Intuitively, that seems wrong but perhaps I shouldn't trust my intuition here.
Peter SingerNever 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. CamutiWriting to offer a piece of information or a connection is a great way to demonstrate that you're looking out for the other person. Humans have a tendency to want to reciprocate, so the more you show you're looking out for someone, the more likely that person will begin to keep you in mind as well.
Adam RifkinWe've built a new Earth. It's not as nice as the old one; it's the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever.
Bill McKibbenI 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 KoreyEverything 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 NewitzHumans 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 KaufmanI don't need to have my convictions confirmed by a show of numbers. However, being among people in front of a band leads me to believe that all is not lost, that humans, now and then, can communicate on a higher level than the political and the practical.
Henry RollinsWater: 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 SaganRecent 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 CurryAll the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that's why you so often want to kill each other.
Brandon SandersonSickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future.
Lauren SlaterOur intuitions, as humans, aren't always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing.
Malcolm GladwellWiting is essentially interior work, and many writers are interior personalities. Having a job forces you out of the world of your work, and into the one in which you get to observe people. Yes, you can imagine all this, but as a fiction writer, you can never observe enough the rhythms of how humans move through the world. A job demands that you structure your time much more carefully. You learn how to be resourceful, and that in turn provides a certain intensity of focus.
Hanya Yanagihara