Human Mattering Quotes

(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks
even pre-philosophically
is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

No one wants growth, constant expansion, physical swelling. Growth is not a human value; it's a means to the ends of sufficiency and security. Once we have enough, no one wants more, unless it is sold to us as a cheap substitute for something else, something non-material. ~ Donella Meadows

The inspiration and authority of the Bible is the bedrock upon which our faith is built. Without it, we are doomed to uncertainty, doubt, and a hopeless groping in the darkness of human speculation. ~ Sam Storms

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving. ~ Terry Pratchett

I sat on a somewhat higher sand dune and watched the eastern sky. Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale, [ ... ] than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could comprehend. As I sat and watched, the feeling overtook me that my very life was slowly dwindling into nothingness. There was no trace here of anything as insignificant as human undertakings. This same event had been occurring hundreds of millions - hundreds of billions - of times, from an age long before there had been anything resembling life on earth. ~ Haruki Murakami

We declare that only man exists. This is not to say that material, inorganic nature and nonhuman beings-animals and plants-are in any sense unreal, insubstantial, or illusory because they do not so exist. We merely state that the reality of these nonhuman realms differs from that of human existence, whose primary characteristic is Da-sein (literally being-the-there) ... Man as man is present ... in a manner wholly different from ... inanimate things. ~ Medard Boss

We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility. ~ Cyril Connolly

I got interested in the idea that love is often used as a kind of blanket explanation for things. I mean, battered wives, for instance: "Why did you go back to him?" "Oh, I loved him." "Why did you embezzle fifteen million pounds and run away to the other side of the world?" "Oh, well, because I was in love." All that and then you don't ask anything else. I thought if I just say, these people needed love and they found it, then it kind of explained it away. I wanted to look at their behaviour and how love can inspire the best and the very worst in human behaviour but love itself is not behaviour. So I avoided the word 'love' until the very end and it's the last word in the novel. I wanted to explore what people will do when they're in such terrible need of love. If there was a big idea then that was it. Then, of course, I hope that if it's a story worth reading it's the characters themselves who make you want to read it, not the big idea. I don't think a big idea drives a novel usually. Something else has to engage you on a much more kind of personal level. ~ Morag Joss

The greatest creative power you have on earth ... is to help others. To ease pain and give joy are your finest powers. Kindness is a human miracle. ~ Anne Rice

As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me. ~ Jonas Salk

Jesus Christ is indeed a crutch for the lame, to help us walk upright, just as he is also medicine for the spiritually sick, bread for the hungry and water for the thirsty. We do not deny this; it is perfectly true. But then all human beings are lame, sick, hungry and thirsty. The only difference between us is not that some are needy, while others are not. It is rather that some know and acknowledge their need, while others either don't through ignorance or won't through pride. ~ John R.W. Stott

Ignored ... was the one unbridgeable gap between physics and any such science of human behavior: the surprises that arise from free will and human creativity ... they constitute the most important economic events. For a miracle is simply an innovation, a sudden and bountiful addition of information to the system. ~ George Gilder

Dr Jack Cohen Podiatrist is an orthopedic specialist with extensive experience in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and injuries of human skeleton system. The narrow field of action for Jack Cohen DPM is surgery of knee, arthroscopic surgery and sports medicine, reconstructive surgery of the lower extremities, installation of artificial hip and knee joints. Immediate area of Dr Jack Cohen DPM activity is arthroscopic reconstruction of the ligaments of the knee joint, surgery cartilage damage of large joints, revision of embedded artificial joints. As a subspecialist children's orthopedics, Dr Jack Cohen Podiatrist deals with the diagnosis and treatment of specific diseases and injuries of the locomotors system in children and adolescents. ~ Jack Cohen

In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process ~ Isaac Asimov

As Israel made the wants of his national existence the law of the world, as under the dominance of these wants he deified even his political vindictiveness; so the Christian made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of the world. [T]hat is, indeed, only of man considered as Christian; for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine universal human heart, recognised man only under the condition, the limitation, of belief in Christ. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

I remember one guy saying, "You're the only human out of all of them," and feeling a little concerned that somehow that meant I wasn't as funny. ~ Allison Silverman

A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic. ~ R. H. Tawney

No human utterance could be seen as innocent. Any set of words could be analysed to reveal not just an individual but a historical consciousness at work. ~ Ania Loomba

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own. ~ Henry Adams

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I'm attracted to the extreme light and the extreme dark. I'm interested in the human condition and what makes people tick. I'm interested in the things people try to hide. ~ Johnny Depp

The arm or the leg of the human body may be amputated without destroying life, yet no man would, therefore, think or say the member was of no importance, or that the functions of the body might be as fully and perfectly performed without it as with it. The salvation of that man is secured who builds on Christ - that sure foundation - but it is no matter of indifference whether he build wood, hay, and stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stones, as the fire shall try every man's work. There is an essential difference between ignorance or error and the neglect or abandonment of what is known to be a part of the truth of God. We may accept with all confidence one of very limited information and of a very defective judgment, but not one who, knowing the mind of the Lord in a particular case, is prepared to class it with unimportant things and neglect it. ~ William Sommerville

Houses are like the human beings that inhabit them. ~ Victor Hugo

Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of the human is the light which can illuminate all life, the future and the past. Shall we not search for it? ~ Mabel Collins

...human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it's just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice. ~ Laurence Rees

That's it. Love makes us all strong. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

All social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There is nothing so unsure as the plans we make that rely on the sensible behavior of another human being. ~ Steven Saylor

Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you - I do not pretend to know how or even why - but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one ... You are the one thing that keeps me Human. ~ Rick Yancey

Everything that I see must become personal; otherwise, it is dead and mechanical. Our only chance to escape the blight of mechanization, of acting and thinking alike, of the huge machine which society is becoming, is to restore life to all things through the saving and beneficent power of the human imagination. ~ Clarence John Laughlin

The case for interconnectedness between conscious human lives is hard to deny. ~ Kat Lahr

Orito pictures the human mind as a loom that weaves disparate threads of belief, memory and narrative into an entity whose common name is Self, and which sometimes calls itself Perception. ~ David Mitchell

The Poet Ridiculed by Hysterical Academics"

Is it, then, your opinion
Women are putty in your hands?
Is this the face to launch upon
A thousand one night stands?

First, please, would you be so kind
As to define your contribution
To modern verse, the Western mind
And human institutions?

Where, where is the long, flowing hair,
The velvet suit, the broad bow tie;
Where is the other-worldly air,
Where the abstracted eye?

Describe the influence on your verse
Of Oscar Mudwarp's mighty line,
The theories of Susan Schmersch
Or the spondee's decline.

You've labored to present us with
This mouse-sized volume; shall this equal
The epic glories of Joe Smith?
He's just brought out a sequel.

Where are the beard, the bongo drums,
Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals,
As who, released from Iowa, comes
To tell of wondrous scandals?

Have you subversive, out of date,
Or controversial ideas?
And can you really pull your weight
Among such minds as these?

Ah, what avails the tenure race,
Ah, what the Ph.D.,
When all departments have a place
For nincompoops like thee? ~ W.D. Snodgrass

Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate
in the mental no less than in the physical. ~ Ayn Rand

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday ~ Don Marquis

Negative emotions impact the human psyche ~ Sunday Adelaja

The entire history of baby formula has been the history of one overlooked nutrient after another ... and still to this day babies fed on the most "nutritionally complete" formula fail to do as
well as babies fed human milk. Even more than margarine, formula stands as the ultimate test product of nutritionism and a fair index of its hubris. ~ Michael Pollan

To reclaim our past and insist that it become a part of our human history is the task that lies before us. For the future requires that women, as well as men, shape the world destiny. ~ Judy Chicago

Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level. ~ A. N. Wilson