Human Migrations Quotes

The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward. ~ Ellsworth Huntington

Entire countries are reduced to their metonyms. Kenya is a safari, Norway is fjords. And Switzerland is mountains. This is an exaggeration, but the truth in it is worth thinking about: it is a country built largely in the lee of the Alps, the towns and cities formed from old human migrations that came to rest in valleys, on lakeshores, and, sometimes, in higher regions. I had a notion: if I could understand the mountains, I could understand the country." (from "Known and Strange Things" by Teju Cole) ~ Teju Cole

We are all the products of nature composed with essential elements. Every natural force has an opposite. The components of earth, wind, water, and fire comprise nature. Similar to nature, we contain complementary, contradictory, and counterpoising elements. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain. ~ Oliver Sacks

There's no rule book for the world. It's in our heads, our collective human hive-mind. If there are rules, we're the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want. ~ Isaac Marion

Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations. ~ Neal Stephenson

The Islamic world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. Such a transition period…makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam.
[Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution] ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen. ~ H.A.L. Fisher

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve. ~ Nick Hornby

If Peter has learned one thing about human nature during all his years in hockey, it's that almost everyone regards themselves as a good team player, but that very few indeed understand what that really means. ~ Fredrik Backman

I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness- and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kind of books. Books, for me, are medicine. ~ Anne Lamott

In the human race today, you came last. ~ Spike Milligan

The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. ~ John Adams

So many human beings, none of them seeing clearly. ~ Anthony Doerr

She at least was broad-minded, and moreover she understood the workings of the human heart. It was creditable for a man to ruin himself for the object of his affections. But this at least she found exaggerated. ~ Ford Madox Ford

The food I eat in my imagination is more powerful and particular than what I consume in reality, just as a dream feels very real seconds after you awake from it, just as a person thinking about killing someone first tries it out in his dreams. You go over it again and again in the imaginary world because you're deprived of whatever it is you want, because there's something in you that misses it - an unfinished piece of art. Human beings sprint toward pleasure. Unfortunately, they feel pain, a joining of sensations, more easily than pleasure. ~ Kyung-ran Jo

In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps it is the pressure of my past, and not my own perverse mind, that has made me into this contradictory being. I am all too well aware of this fault in myself. You must forgive me. ~ Natsume Sōseki

Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance. ~ Anita Rau Badami

The American Dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. ~ James Truslow Adams

Betrayal was the greatest of all crimes, for it took all that was human within a person and made it a thing of pain. In the face of that, murder itself was surcease: it was quick, and it ended the anguish and despair of a life without hope. ~ Steven Erikson

What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain. ~ Paul Kalanithi

People spoke so reverently of affection. For me, it seemed a torment. I couldn't believe people enjoyed these feelings. How could someone relish this excruciating need to secure a claim on another human? ~ S.J. Kincaid

The soul is not a physical entity, but instead refers to everything about us that is not physical - our values, memories, identity, sense of humor. Since the soul represents the parts of the human being that are not physical, it cannot get sick, it cannot die, it cannot disappear. In short, the soul is immortal. ~ Harold S. Kushner

Yeah, even if I see a human with a Shinigami, I tell you.-Ryuk ~ Tsugumi Ohba

George always said the first summer of the Rising was possibly the best example of human nobility that history had to offer, because for just a few months, before the accusations started flying and the fingers started pointing, we really were one people, united against one enemy. And we fought. We fought for the right to live, and in the end, we won. Sort of, anyway. ~ Mira Grant

Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of. ~ Rajneesh

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. ~ C.S. Lewis

Children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field - serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture ~ Solomon Northup

Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life - he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance... In this intermediate stage he wavers - neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will... We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth. ~ Theodore Dreiser

To be fucking human, to not put too fine a point on it, and Daniel Boone can kiss my ass. ~ Terry Pratchett

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention. ~ Robert Burns

Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. ~ Sam Harris

Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being. ~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas ~ John F. Kennedy

Even Charles Darwin, that human decoder ring of bizarre behavior, found the idea of saving a stranger's life to be a total head-scratcher. ~ Christopher McDougall

She wondered if justice was possible in a world full of profoundly evil and damaged human beings, in a veritable universe of damage. ~ Lisa Scottoline

Every human being has a personal legend to be fulfilled, and this is our reason for being in the world. This personal legend manifests itself in our enthusiasm for the task. ~ Paulo Coelho

Gentlemen of the human race, I say to hell with the lot of you. ~ Victor Hugo

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done. ~ Mark Twain

I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication. ~ John Shelby Spong