Human Diversity Quotes

How's things, man?" The black man extended his hand for a handshake. Mathematical formulae were jotted on the sleeve of his shirt, right up to the elbow.
"Very good," said Peter. It had never occurred to him before that dark-skinned people didn't have the option of jotting numbers on their skin. You learned something new about human diversity every day. ~ Michel Faber

I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2.' ~ Henry Louis Gates

Expulsion and genocide, though both are international offenses, must remain distinct; the former is an offense against fellow-nations, whereas the latter is an attack upon human diversity as such, that is, upon a characteristic of the "human status" without which the very words "mankind" or "humanity" would be devoid of meaning. ~ Hannah Arendt

But charting our identities along a line in two dimensions has its limitations; namely, it doesn't accurately reflect the human diversity we observe. We don't see each other, or ourselves, in only two dimensions, and bisexual and nonbinary advocates are suggesting that it's long past time to update our ideology. Perhaps, instead of insisting that each person can be charted along a line, we should be looking up and seeing the multitude of sexualities and gender identities that exist in 3D, sprinkled through space like the stars. ~ Austen Hartke

Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? ~ Lillian Hellman

This combination of the abandonment of evangelism, the divorce between evangelism, apologetics and discipleship, and the failure to appreciate true human diversity is deeply serious. It is probably behind the fact that many Christians, realizing the ineffectiveness of many current approaches and sensing the unpopularity and implausibility of much Christian witness, have simply fallen silent and given up evangelism altogether, sometimes relieved to mask their evasion under a newfound passion for social justice that can forget the gaucheness of evangelism. At best, many of us who take the good news of Jesus seriously are eager and ready to share the good news when we meet people who are open, interested or in need of what we have to share. But we are less effective when we encounter people who are not open, not interested or not needy - in other words, people who are closed, indifferent, hostile, skeptical or apathetic, and therefore require persuasion. ~ Os Guinness

Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

To what do you not drive human hearts, cursed for craving gold! ~ Ariana Franklin

Daniel, I was asked of a budding author, how do you know if your story is on track? My answer: I start by knowing my intention, my target. Then, with purpose, I write the scene that unfolds before me, as faithfully as is human. - Daniel LaMonte ~ Daniel LaMonte

I'm a real woman who digests her meals and breaks out and has sweet little pockets of cellulite on her upper thighs that she's not apologizing for. Because guess what? We all have that shit. We're all human beings. ~ Amy Schumer

No one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity. ~ Gustave Flaubert

The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door.
There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it.
'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er ... why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'
This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking. ~ Terry Pratchett

I love you.
How much?
More than the ocean is large.
More than a shark loves human limbs.
More than Gavin loves his reflection.
More than baseball players love steroids.
More than chocolate, more than wine and way, way more than anchovies.
More than yesterday, but less than tomorrow.
...
How much? I type.
This much. It's his voice. ~ Courtney Cole

One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Love isn't something you do, it isn't something you can make happen. Love is an instinct, a deep part of the human soul that reaches out of you to find the one meant to be with you. You can't fight it, nor can you bend it to your will. Just like breathing and eating, it is a part of you that you cannot live without. ~ Kerri E. Lorenz

She'd have to trust Jasper, knowing he was human. Knowing he could hurt her, even when he didn't mean to. She'd have to trust that he'd do his best, and make amends when his best wasn't enough. ~ Kit Rocha

Perhaps they suspected that I thought less of them because I knew it. (I'm too aware of human frailty to have let that happen. If anything, I thought more of them for wanting to face up to what they had done and for trying to change.) ~ Harold S. Kushner

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man. ~ Erich Fromm

Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy. ~ Louisa May Alcott

I thank the bullies who bullied me in many ways they taught how not to treat other human beings, not to manipulate, to not to lack empathy, to not lack morals, not to to abuse physically and/or emotionally. I thank them for the assumptions that I was "slow", "stupid", "thick".
I often wonder with most them hitting their late 20's would they want their children/loved ones to be treated how they treated me? Good question isn't it and I probably know the answer. Because the scary thing is looking into the lense of someone else acting the same as YOU to your loved one must be difficult to take. ~ Paul Isaacs

I know the human spirit. I haven't found a wall that can be built that a determined human being can't get over, under or around. ~ Chris Christie

One of the many things TV does not show you is the potential range and horror of the human form. For this alone, thought Alex, it is rightly celebrated. ~ Zadie Smith

And suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices with nice views,are constantly being shoved out the window head first, without so much as a pension plan,by younger hotshot cells moving up from below. ~ Dave Barry

History was a series of decisions about what to tell and a series of accidents about what survived after telling. Not truth, but a historian could search for truth, and the search was as worthy as any other human activity. ~ David Drake

I've had an addiction for a long time to the whole business of maximizing one's potential, what I call human activation. The vehicle for actualizing oneself is choice, options, seeking out the proper choices. ~ Padgett Powell

To be a human being means to be lonely.To go on becoming a person means exploring new modes of resting in our loneliness. ~ Robert Hobson

If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, 'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not? ~ Charles Dickens

The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world. ~ Sean Carroll

The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred. ~ Daniel Berrigan

We do not need to plan or devise a "world of the future"; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid "futurology" available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at "the future of the human race"; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children.
(pg. 73, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine") ~ Wendell Berry

If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet. ~ Charles Mengel Allen

Give yourself freedom to grow through love, as love is the most natural direction for humans to grow, just as every tree grows upward towards the sky. Don't try to control the way that love moves, as any attempt will be futile, for love grows like the branches, wildly growing by the laws of nature, rather than by human rational. Let love grow by her own nature. ~ Forrest Curran

Would strap you, hands and feet, to a machine, turn a wheel to make you talk. Or even not to, just to watch you experience it. Or because there was someone visiting the court who had never gotten a chance to see the machine in action. Another one of those things that makes you think, well, okay, the end of the human race, what are you gonna do? ~ Ben H. Winters

English majors understand human nature better than economists do. ~ Jane Smiley

It would be nice to redefine ourselves - at the moment we are drowning in diversity. That's not a bad thing, its just going to take a while before we refocus. ~ Harvey Fierstein

Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy. ~ Max McKeown

Don't envy people, respect them ~ Sunday Adelaja

We do not need to eliminate religion, or let me be a bit articulate and say – we cannot eliminate religion from the human society, as long as there is misery and malnourishment in this world. God is nature's antidote to misery, and religion is the capsule it comes in. And those who try to take away religion from the people, are simply fools - and the irony is, some of them are scientists, and quite brilliant ones in their fields. Religion is far too valuable in the human society, that's why it has survived so long. So, we do not need to eliminate religion, but to make it evolve at par with our civilized conscience. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Turkey, with its political intolerance, as I have described it, is prepared to march forward, to break with its taboo about the Armenians, and is making great strides with respect to human rights and freedom of speech so that it can join the European Union. This alone shows how powerful the European idea is. ~ Orhan Pamuk

When the gunman realizes that nobody else is armed, he will lay down his weapons and turn himself in ... that's just human nature. ~ Dianne Feinstein

The majority of unskilled investors stubbornly hold onto their losses when the losses are small and reasonable. They could get out cheaply, but being emotionally involved and human, they keep waiting and hoping until their loss gets much bigger and costs them dearly. ~ William O'Neil

There are those moments where you realize that your parents or your heroes are human and are fallible. That concept, in and of itself, is something that is dangerous to me, in a good way. It's exciting and scary to meet those people. ~ Simon Helberg

When everything is convertible, and when trust depends on anonymous coins and cowry shells, it corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing them with the cold laws of supply and demand. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being. ~ Martin Heidegger

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out."
"So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?"
I nodded. "That and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. ~ Mark Twain

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

We couldn't trust them. They couldn't trust us. Mutual attempts at destruction are the only logical result. He thought of human dreams - both Old Empire and new - of contacting some extra-terrestrial intelligence such as nobody had ever truly encountered. Why? Why would we ever want to? We'd never be able to communicate, and even if we could, we'd still be those same two prisoners forced to trust - and risk - or to damn the other in trying to save slightly more of our own hides. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Man's free agency is not of the mind, for that is bound. There is no freedom there. ~ Swami Vivekananda