Human Flourishing Quotes

Aiming at health, restoring health - that is a goal that is both morally important and limited, because it aims at the restoration of normal human functioning, which is an important part of human flourishing. ~ Michael Sandel

progress of the ethic of diffusion and liberalization has meant growing estrangement from precisely these prerequisites for human flourishing, especially among the least advantaged Americans. ~ Yuval Levin

To enact a vision of human flourishing based on the qualities of life that Jesus modeled will invariably challenge the given structures of the social order. In this light, there is no true leadership without putting at risk one's time, wealth, reputation, and position. ~ James Davison Hunter

Beauty is not good capital. I compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable. ~ Tressie McMillan Cottom

We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish. ~ Ken Robinson

The greatest risk to human flourishing, then, is not institutionalization but the loss of institutions. In our time we have seen the rise of the "prosperity gospel," which in its crassest forms promises quick wealth in mechanical proportion to faith. But the prosperity gospel has not only a thin and unbiblical understanding of wealth (which in Scripture is never a private matter but an occasion for blessing for whole communities, not to mention the fruit and source of justice) - it has a thin and unbiblical understanding of time. In the biblical mindset, prosperity that does not last is not true prosperity at all. The only biblical prosperity gospel is a posterity gospel - the promise that generation after generation will know the goodness of God through the properly stewarded abundance of God's world. ~ Andy Crouch

Christian feminists can celebrate any sort of feminism that brings more justice and human flourishing to the world, no matter who is bringing it, since we recognize the hand of God in all that is good. ~ Sarah Bessey

Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing. ~ Paul Gibbons

Regardless of whether people have free will, human flourishing requires that they live in an environment in which they are treated as if they did. ~ Charles Murray

I am certainly open to the idea that this might be used to explain other philosophical categories besides knowledge. I have some real sympathy with the work of those moral realists who have tried to give naturalistic accounts of human flourishing, and who offer accounts of right action in such terms. (I suppose this is more evidence that I really do have deep affinities with Aristotle!) ~ Hilary Kornblith

The Christian church does not ask the U. S. Supreme Court, or any other human court, what marriage is. Marriage is a pre-political institution defined by our Creator - for His glory and for human flourishing. ~ Albert Mohler

I'm less interested in proselytizing or a bigger tent for its own sake than in issues of human flourishing. What are the best conditions in which people live and flourish? It's more the, How do we get along? What does it mean for living now? ~ Karen L. King

We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or 'human flourishing'. ~ Alain De Botton

We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it's not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that's not what sends you to heaven or Hell. ~ Timothy Keller

Conservatives have the most effective solutions for human flourishing in our intellectual DNA. Our ideas have lifted up people all over the world. But the American people do not trust us to put those principles into practice to help those who need help right here. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Engagement is not a matter of either speaking or doing; not a matter of either offering a compelling intellectual vision or embodying a set of alternative practices; not a matter of either merely making manifest the richness and depth of interior life or merely working to change the institutions of society; not a matter of either only displaying alternative politics as gathered in Eucharistic celebrations or merely working for change as the dispersed people of God. It is all these things and more. The whole person in all aspects of her life is engaged in fostering human flourishing and serving the common good. ~ Miroslav Volf

I do not fully understand the way of human beings. They are a curious and remarkable tribe altogether. They are capable of anything. I know that much. They are a constant surprise to me. They are a constant surprise to themselves also. They appear to live in a state of constant amazement. This makes them refreshing and infuriating. But there is a greatness about them sometimes. More perhaps than they know. Or a capacity for greatness. More than they know. It's confusing but I know this to be true. I have learned that much in all these years. ~ Brian Doyle

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world. ~ Henry James

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent. ~ Peter Drucker

[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings. ~ Isaac Asimov

Let us remember Paul VI's words: "For the Catholic Church, no one is a stranger, no one is excluded, no one is far away" (Homily for the closing of the Second Vatican Council, 8 December 1965). Indeed, we are a single human family that is journeying on toward unity, making the most of solidarity and dialogue among peoples in the multiplicity of differences. ~ Pope Francis

I remembered from movies and TV that a human being striking a window could cause it to shatter, but the glass was too strong or I was too weak. My body didn't do much anymore when I put it to things. I didn't even make much noise pounding my fist against the glass: the ones that turned to look dismissed me almost before they had swiveled their heads. I might have been a painting of a hysterical female, paused in motion and screaming decoratively. But my throat was going raw, and my hands hurt dully. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

Some people think it's naive to think we can make love our new bottom line. What I believe is naive is thinking human civilization as we know it will survive another two hundred years if we do not. ~ Marianne Williamson

I Love you.But I can't Afford my Life to make our relationship perfect. ~ Dinakar Reddy

I think this president has so badly abused his power, breached his trust in remarkable ways with our Congress, with the American people, has violated so many of our international treaty obligations, our Constitution, our domestic statutory laws, and has been responsible for ordering and condoning heinous human rights violations. We need to draw the line. ~ Rocky Anderson

I do not want to have children, and that's okay. As it turns out, not wanting kids will absolutely not make me "less" of a woman. I am not defective. I am not wrong. I know my own mind. I have intrinsic value as a singular, autonomous person, and that value is not contingent upon me using my body to produce another person. Wanting to be child-free does not make me any better or worse of a human being than any other person who does choose to have children. It's just a choice I've made about my own life. It's no less valid a choice than the choice to become a mother. And that, to me, gets at the real heart of feminism: being granted the freedom to make choices for myself without judgment. ~ Jessica Burnell

I believe that the basic nature of human beings is gentle and compassionate. It is therefore in our own interest to encourage that nature, to make it live within us, to leave room for it to develop. If on the contrary we use violence, it is as if we voluntarily obstruct the positive side of human nature and prevent its evolution. ~ Dalai Lama

Some people regard the meek man as one who will not put up a fight for anything but will let others run over him. . . . In fact from human experience we know that to accomplish anything good a person must make an effort; and making an effort is putting up a fight against the obstacles. - Father Emil Kapaun ~ Roy Wenzl

Here are two enormous worlds side by side; what's remarkable is how little notice they have taken of each other. If the Western and Islamic worlds were two individual human beings, we might see symptoms of repression here. We might ask, What happened between these two? Were they lovers once? Is there some history of abuse? ~ Tamim Ansary

We are animals and as animals we kill to survive. Unfortunately some of us are monsters and kill just because they can. ~ Richard Myerscough

Christianity is strange: it requires human beings to recognize that they are vile and even abominable. ~ Blaise Pascal

There's something about you, Lorenzo," I say, shaking my head as I look away, unconsciously returning his smile. "Sometimes I think you might just be human."
"You're making shit weird again, Scarlet."
I roll my eyes. "Whatever. ~ J.M. Darhower

Although I had nothing to offer in return, I came to understand that there was something beneficially reciprocal happening to the people who were blessing me. For a few minutes, they suspended their normal egocentric lives, placed a fellow human being in higher priority than themselves, and expressed their hopes for the other's peace and well-being. In so doing, they inevitably lived life on a higher plane, if only for a few moments. It always smelled like the kingdom of God to me. ~ David Brazzeal

Human beings resemble peregrine falcons: they had the power and the ability to soar up to the skies, free and ethereal and unrestrained, but sometimes they would also, either under duress or of their own free will, accept captivity...She had also observed how a hood would be put on these noble raptors to make sure they would not panic. Seeing was knowing, and knowing was frightening...But underneath that hood where there were no directions, and the sky and the land melted into a swathe of black linen, though comforted, the falcon would still feel nervous, as if in preparation for a blow that could come at any moment. Years later now, it seemed to her that religion – and power and money and ideology and politics – acted like a hood too. All these superstitions and predictions and beliefs deprived human beings of sight, keeping them under control, but deep within weakening their self-esteem to such a point that they now feared anything, everything. ~ Elif Shafak

He puts it on, and his gaze locks to mine. His jewels flicker between passion and defiance - an evocative and intimidating combination. Fair warning, I intend to make good use of that time. I will be gentle, but I will not be a gentleman. You will be the center of my world. I'll show you the wonders of Wonderland, and when you're drunk on the beauty and chaos that your heart so yearns to know, I will take you under my wings and make you forget the human realm ever existed. You'll never want to leave Wonderland or me again. ~ A.G. Howard

The thought that human beings are considering saving lives by killing millions of their fellow human beings is so preposterous that the words 'saving life' have lost all of their meaning. One of the most tragic facts of our century is that this 'No' to nuclear weapons has been spoken so seldom, so softly, and by so few. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Predict the predictable, it sounds something strange and difficult, but so far is stupid. To predict the predictable is the stupid thing ever done by human kind. ~ Deyth Banger

Elections, for their part, are typically popularity contests rather than measures of candidates' relative competency or effectiveness. Imagine if scientific truth were determined according to which scientist was most popular. To be successful, scientists would have to be charismatic and attractive - and human knowledge would suffer terribly. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are. ~ Paulo Freire

One has got to choose between the two evils, also between the lesser of the two evils in the matter of food, and therefore vegetarian food has got to he taken by man in order to sustain human life. ~ Morarji Desai

Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things - customs - that are their own."
"Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict," Aaor said.
"It is," I agreed. "They're proving their independence at a time when they're no longer independent ... ~ Octavia E. Butler

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth ~ Prince Philip

We were beginning to understand why, in pre-anaesthetic days, the Bible had stipulated that suicide was a sin. Anything other than the prospect of eternal damnation, and the human race would probably have done away with itself at the first sign of the dentist. ~ Kate Griffin

The deepest desire of the human spirit is to be acknowledged. ~ Stephen Covey

The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [ ... ] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible. ~ T. S. Eliot

If someone mistakes your kindness for weakness, that's their fault - not yours. And it's OK to be a decent human being in this life. ~ Jeremy Piven

Being empowered includes developing the powerful qualities that lead human beings to cultivate wellness and healing. And those are the same qualities that enhance all relationships on earth and reduce stress (which seems to be the largest precursor to disease)-gentle ness, calmness, patience, humility, compassion, and gratitude. ~ Bryan Kest

The strength of human instinct seems to be quite overrated as it is so feeble it requires a lifetime of guidance, education, training and practical experience to develop. More critically, without conscious and diligent effort across one generation to pass its knowledge on to the next generation, all that was gained will be lost, forewarned by an increasing rarity of the reminiscence, "Every secret of life I know, I learned at my grandfather's knee. ~ T.K. Naliaka

I was experiencing every emotion, all at once, all the time, and it was, for the first time, completely undiluted. I was learning how to be human, and being human fucking sucks. ~ NOFX

Social hierarchy doesn't hold a candle to the power of feeling isolated in your own skin. ~ Elyse Draper

Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the har­monious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and chil­dren play, and start catching passers-by with his lasso. He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physio­logical needs which are considered private as dis­creetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human so­cieties. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff.
His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his faith in the "naturalness" of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled "Con­fidential" or "Top Secret" that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no ~ Czesław Miłosz

Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, 'we' and 'they'. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We were always distinct from them, and owe them nothing. We don't want to see any of them in our territory, and we don't care an iota what happens in their territory. They are barely even human. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

[T]he tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave, and, perhaps, beyond. ~ Joseph Conrad

In the twenty-first century, human minds, and to a lesser extent, human hearts can work like well calibrated precision instruments, but who can write the universal manual on imagination? ~ Martin Guevara Urbina

When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head.

Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.

Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness. ~ M. Scott Peck

It is rarely possible, when a human being is in deep need, to look upon somebody who offers help as merely another flawed human being with whom one is going to engage in a protracted conversation. A kind of wild idealization sets in, and we imagine the person in whom we confide to possess ineffable and valuable traits beyond those attainable by ordinary mortals. We ascribe value, and project qualities onto this person that almost never correspond with reality. It is a little bit like falling in love - powerful emotions are called forth. It takes a strong person not to exploit the ensuing power imbalance. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson