Popular quotes about Humans! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
A few years ago, they [Neandertals] were thought to be ancestral to anatomically modern humans, but now we know that modern humans appeared at least 100,000 years ago, much before the disappearance of the Neandertals. Moreover, in caves in the Middle East, fossils of modern humans have been found dated 120,000-100,000 years ago, as well as Neandertals dated at 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, followed again by modern humans dated at 40,000 years ago. It is unclear whether the two forms repeatedly replaced one another by migration from other regions, or whether they coexisted in some areas
Francisco J. AyalaHumans call animals 'dumb'... after they robbed their entire own precious world. They are intelligent beings in their own right, and thoroughly self-sufficient... if not molested by humans. Yet, after millennia of slavery by selfish/callous humans they're made to look dumb! The 'superior species' in their situations would, too, appear 'dumb'.
Adela PopescuI think that as people and as humans, our social pattern is to always run away from problems... as humans in general.
Cristian MachadoThe pretense that humans are superior to nonhumans is entirely unsupportable. I have seen no compelling evidence that humans are particularly more "intelligent" than any other creature. I have had long and fruitful relationshis with many nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, and have reveled in the bouquet of radically different intelligences - different forms, not different "quantities" that they have introduced to me, each in his or her own time, in his or her own way.
Derrick JensenMy 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 KleinigWhen 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 HarrisDo what's good for humans, modeled on how humans already do things; ignore what's convenient for computers.
Stewart BrandLet animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.
Aravind AdigaLots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
Neil deGrasse TysonThe 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 had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.
Terry PratchettThings that raise your energy usually don't involve humans; things that cause energy loss usually involve humans.
Frederick LenzFor 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.
Aristotle'cause humans, above all, fear intelligence. how humans, scared out of their minds, gather whatever intelligence they can put their hands on and put it all in a central penitentiary named facts.
Kathy AckerAlmost 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 MiyazakiI reject the idea that humans are superior to other life forms. . . Man is just an ape with an overly developed sense of superiority.
Paul WatsonSome, while deploring animal abuses, on the same breath approve 'benefits to humans from certain animal abuses'! Who would criticize the Jewish holocaust or Black slavery, and YET praise the benefits to Germans or Whites??? This convenient ambiguity at the expense of animals is unacceptable!!!
Adela PopescuOur children are humans and deserve to be treated respectfully. Discipline doesnโt include raging, screaming, abusing, neglecting, humiliating, or shaming our kids. God never treats us like that. That sort of discipline never โproduces a harvest of righteousness and peace.
Jen HatmakerThen 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 HubbellWith 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. RamachandranNot to leave planet Earth would be like castaways on a desert island not trying to escape...Sending humans to other planets ... will shape the future of the human race in ways we don't yet understand, and may determine whether we have any future at all.
Stephen HawkingWhen you get in the water with a wild animal, you're essentially giving yourself to that animal because, as humans, we're quite helpless and vulnerable in the water. You're at the seal's mercy. You're at the predator's mercy.
Paul NicklenWhen humans truly discover the power of love, it will prove more important than the harnessing of fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin[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 not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzeeโs eyes, an intelligent, self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?
Frans de WaalFaced with the evidence, many deniers have started to admit that global warming is real, but argue that humans have little or nothing to do with it.
David SuzukiTo argue that we humans are capable of complex multifarious thought and feeling, whereas the sheep's perception is probably limited by lowly sheepish perceptions, is no more to the point than if I were to slaughter and eat you on the grounds that I am a sophisticated personality able to enjoy Mozart, formal logic and cannibalism, whereas your imaginative world seems confined to True Romances and tinned spaghetti.
Brigid BrophyBut without humans, the wild would take over. It would only take a hundred years or so for nature to win again.
Lucy ChristopherTo 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 BerryHumans were made to work in sweet to earn a living. Those that try to get rich or live at the expense of others all get divine retribution somewhere along the line. That's the lesson. unfortunately we forget the lessons quickly and then we have to learn them all over again.
Jet BlackOf 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 WinstonHearts, you say? You Humans are always so quick to speak of such things. As though you carry your hearts in the very palms of your hands. But this eye of mine perceives all. There is nothing that it overlooks. If this eye cannot see a thing, then it does not exist. That is the assumption under which I have always fought. What is this "heart"? If I tear open that chest of yours, will I see it there? If I smash open that skull of yours, will I see it there?
Tite KuboShe 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 ZusakAnimals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.
James StewartThe technologies that will be most successful will resonate with human behaviour instead of working against it. In fact, to solve the problems of delivering and assimilating new technology into the workplace, we must look to the way humans act and react. In the last 20 years, US industry has invested more than $1 trillion in technology, but has realised little improvement in the efficiency of its knowledge workers ยญ and virtually none in their effectiveness. If we could solve the problems of the assimilation of new technology, the potential would be enormous.
John Seely BrownWar ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.
John SteinbeckWiting 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 YanagiharaBecause animals are property, we consider as "humane treatment" that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans.
Gary L. FrancioneHumans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible.
Bruce SterlingFor the record, my own loyalties are uncomplicated. I adore few humans more than I love books. I make no promises, but I do not expect to purchase a Kindle or a Nook or any of their offspring. I hope to keep bringing home bound paper books until my shelves snap from their weight, until there is no room in my apartment for a bed or a couch or another human being, until the floorboards collapse and my eyes blur to dim. But the book, bless it, is not a simple thing.
Ben EhrenreichI am afforded a bit of easy wonderment in relative comfort as to how humans have lasted so long. Climate- and geography-wise, the planet seems to have little use for us.
Henry RollinsMy experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue.
Muhammad YunusWe humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors.
Barry LygaKnowing how to keep someone motivated and how to keep a connection are skills humans have learned and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. A robot can't figure out whether you can do one more push-up, or how to motivate you to actually do it.
Erik Brynjolfsson