Human Failing Quotes

It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human. ~ Edward W. Said

Inflexibility is the worst human failing. You can learn to check impetuosity, overcome fear with confidence and laziness with discipline. But for rigidity of mind, there is no antidote. It carries the seeds of its own destruction. ~ Anton Myrer

The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all. ~ Stephen Hawking

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best. ~ Jacqueline Carey

When the laws are written and administered by the most powerful leaders in a society, it is human nature for them to understand, justify, and protect the interests of themselves and people like them. Many injustices arise from this natural human failing. ~ Jimmy Carter

Somehow, the very errors and faults of one individual served to call out the higher excellencies in another, and so they re-acted upon each other, and the result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Anger diminishes our power to distinguish right from wrong, and this ability is one of the highest human attributes. If it is lost, we are lost. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Kim's gripe with humans was nothing new. She, like the rest of the Guardians, put her life on the line every time she faced demons and was entitles to her own opinion. Sometimes I wish she would tall in love with a human. That would shut her up. ~ P.C. Cast

Who says that tradition cannot be changed? The traditions which go against the human values has to be changed, otherwise it is like a poisonous snake that is hanging on our neck to kill us. ~ Pratibha Ray

It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes. ~ Svetlana Alliluyeva

The poet's place, it seems to me, is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature. ~ Aldous Huxley

Love is antithetical to human nature. Humans seek their own good. Their own survival. Their own glorification. But love seeks the good of the other, even to the detriment of the self. Even to the detriment of others. ~ Christina Daley

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they're grounded in solid human emotion and experience. ~ Brandon Sanderson

And what about the question which looms up continually within Christian discussion, about how human behavior as a whole relates to the overwhelming grace of God? This is the point at which the story of the rich young man, and the other scenes in Mark 10, seem to be saying, No: what matters isn't simply keeping a bunch of rules; what matters is character. Not just any old sort of character, either, but a particular sort: the sort Jesus was urging and modeling - the character of patience, humility, and above all generous, self-giving love. And the message of Mark at this point seems to be that you don't get that character just by trying. You get it by following Jesus. ~ N. T. Wright

I definitely have managed to overcome dyslexia now to become a fully functional human being but things were a lot more difficult when I was younger. ~ Ahmet Zappa

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

The quotation falsely attributed to Stalin, 'One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,' gets the numbers wrong but captures a real fact about human psychology. (p. 220) ~ Steven Pinker

it's being branded a failure that causes the most pain; when 'failure' changes from being a verb to becoming a noun. ~ Anup Kochhar

Eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help. Whether it's going to be a consortium or one entity remains to be seen. I could be wrong. I could be one of the old fogies! Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing. It happens. A company has to be willing to bear the risk of its rocket failing. It's a very large capital investment. ~ Sally Ride

Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other. ~ Epictetus

It is the popular misconception of marriage as a mere social convention or quaint tradition invented by the brain of man which has led to the denigrating of this holy relation, the multiplication of unspeakable immorality, the common unrest between husbands and wives, and the gradual disintegration of society and civilization. For if marriage exists merely by human authority then men and women may do with it or conduct themselves in it as they please. They may redefine it, or they may abandon it altogether. But if marriage is a divine institution, then it is governed by a higher authority. It becomes, then, a matter of obedience, and the conduct of husbands and wives within marriage is a conduct for which they must give their account to God. The original institution of marriage is therefore basic to our understanding of marriage, our estimation of marriage, and our right behavior in marriage. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Any other foundation will fail, but Christ is a sure and steady rock to build your life on. ~ Billy Graham

What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

For one thing, it helps us see the logical consistency of Human preferences for what it is - a hopeless mirage ~ Daniel Kahneman

Look at the people who you surround yourself with. Who your friends are and who they are because they are a reflection of you. Your experiences in life define who you are, and everything else that makes you, you; shapes you into the person you are meant to be. Self discovery can last a lifetime because we are continually growing and changing as human beings. You are the person you've become today for a reason. So, ask yourself why. What brought you to the person you are now? Paint yourself a picture of who you once were, and who you now are to see how much you've changed, and, maybe, you'll discover something valuable to who you truly are. ~ Auliq Ice

Ordinary reality and human life is probably the most extraordinary development of all spaces and times. It shows and proves how the greatest fantasy and absurdity can be the only reality for billions of souls. The great gift we receive from our human reality, when we are ready to accept it, is the capacity to follow its example, allowing all our fantasies, even the most absurd, to become real. ~ Franco Santoro

The emergence of self-organized ecoranges generates the potential for highly adaptable responses to environmental perturbations that might affect that ecorange. Within that system, all the plants are continually communicating with each other, sending chemical communications along the mycelial network to other plants in the community. (Plants also speak using auditory signals through a complex sound-based language that is far more ancient than the human though it exists in a much subtler sound spectrum than our own.) ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they're simply trying to find enough to eat. When they've just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it's time to argue over the place settings. ~ Terry Pratchett

You have to remove your human sentiment when it comes to greed and the accumulation of wealth. ~ Richard Armitage

I once sat down on a bench at Cape Town railway station where the notice "Whites Only" was obscured. A few moments later a white man approached and shouted: 'Get off!' It never occurred to him that he was achieving the opposite of his dreams of superiority and had become a living object of contempt, that human beings, when they are human, dare not conduct themselves in such ways. ~ Bessie Head

A human being was connected to the world through his or her skin and how could someone with clogged pores feel the environment or be sensitive to its vibrations? ~ Fatema Mernissi

Know why people run marathons? ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human - which means its a superpower all humans posses. ~ Christopher McDougall

Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families. ~ Melinda Gates

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the "value-forming substance", the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc. ~ Karl Marx

How could the Creator depend on anyone, or anything? How could God have the attributes of a human? How could a human have attributes of Allah? The Creator endowed His creation with the facilities of hearing and seeing, but their limited hearing and seeing was in no way comparable to the divine ability of the One above the heavens to hear and see all things. He heard all that was spoken in the far reaches of the earth or whispered in the most private of quarters, even in the most secluded homes, while having eminent knowledge and understanding of it all. He suffered no confusion or difficulty in comprehending or hearing the multitude of languages, subtleties, and conversation spoken all at once from the billions of humans upon the earth. Unlike His creation, His sight was all-encompassing, and He could see into the very breasts of humans while while having complete sight and control over the entire universe. His knowledge of the affairs of His creation was nothing like one could even hope to comprehend. ~ Umm Zakiyyah

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person's life. God is in everyone's life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else - God is in this person's life. You can - you must - try to seek God in every human life. ~ Pope Francis

Only when we accept and forgive all that is or has been the good, the bad, and the ugly of our human lives can we get off the guilt trip and back into the flow. That means we must love our humanness and all of our failings; we must accept, learn from, and yes, even love our mistakes. ~ Sonia Choquette

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But - I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve. ~ Clarice Lispector

Two chemicals called actin and myosin evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and relax. Thus, insects learned to fly. When one of those paired molecules are absent, wings will grow but they cannot flap and are therefore useless. Today, the same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart, and when one is absent, the person's heartbeat is inefficient and weak, ultimately leading to heart failure.
Again, science marvels at the way molecules adapt over millions of years, but isn't there a deeper intent? In our hearts, we feel the impulse to fly, to break free of boundaries. Isn't that the same impulse nature expressed when insects began to take flight? The prolactin that generates milk in a mother's breast is unchanged from the prolactin that sends salmon upstream to breed, enabling them to cross from saltwater to fresh. ~ Deepak Chopra

No one can control their results. We can, however, control our attitude. When we practise compassion, it is most effective when it is unconditional and free from seeking an outcome – compassion is a matter of choice rather than a self-seeking action. And so, if we assist another human being from a place of presence and compassion, we are not looking to find our happiness off the back of others' suffering. Nor are we trying to control them. Compassion is a conscious choice rather than an emotional knee-jerk reaction. ~ Christopher Dines

Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming. It means doing the unromantic and tedious work necessary to forge meaningful coalitions, and it means recognizing which coalitions are possible and which coalitions are not. It means knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step. It means fighting despair. ~ Audre Lorde

I prefer to learn everything through music. If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their love for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real. ~ Jeff Buckley

I believe humanity would develop their way forward quicker if a human didn't have to waste so much time on sleep and fighting countless software and device bugs. ~ Sahara Sanders

One of them is a very familiar personage. Her name is "Mother Church." She is, in many ways, an admirable and dedicated person, deeply concerned about her children, endlessly and tirelessly careful for every detail of their welfare. Her long experience has taught her to understand her family very well. She knows their capabilities and she knows their weakness even better. She is patient and imperturbable, quite unshockable (she has witnessed all of the considerable range of human wickedness in her time) and there are no lengths to which she ill not go to educate her family. She has a huge fund of stories, maxims and advice, all of them time-tested, and usually interesting as well. She is very talented, skilled din creating a beautiful home for her children; she can show them how to enrich their lives with the glory of music and art. And there is no doubt that she loves God, and wishes to guide her children according to his will.

On the other hand, she is extremely inclined to feel that her will and God's are identical. In her eyes there can be no better, no other, way than hers. If she is unshockable, she is frequently cynical. She is shrewd, with a thoroughly earthy and often humorous shrewdness. She knows her children's limitations so well that she will not allow them to outgrow them. She will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority 'for their own good' but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppres ~ Rosemary Haughton