Human Well Being Quotes

Attachment within relationships is essential to human well-being ... ~ Renee Lewis

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible. ~ Sam Harris

We must be courageous in speaking out on the issues that concern us:
We must not bend under the weight of spurious arguments
invoking culture or traditional values.
No value worth the name supports the oppression
and enslavement of women.
The function of culture and tradition is to provide
a framework for human well-being.
If they are used against us, we will reject them, and move on. We will not allow ourselves to be silenced. ~ Nafis Sadik

Often, when a human suffers through major emotional traumas, a lack of well being follows if their feelings about the trauma are not completely expressed. When the trauma is severe and the suffering is continuous, their animal companion's condition may deteriorate too. ~ Colleen M. Flanagan

As the twentieth century draws to a close it has become obvious that material yardsticks alone cannot serve as an adequate measure of human well-being. Even as basic an issue as poverty has to be re-examined to take into account the psychological sense of deprivation that makes people feel poor. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence. ~ Thomas Berry

Perhaps this is an area where every generation starts from scratch. Although the crisis of the First World War inaugurated an especially strong period of disillusion with regard to the optimism of the previous age, the pattern has repeated itself in many ways in more recent times, e.g., the loss of faith in politics as a means of advancing human well-being. And perhaps this also has to do with basic elements in growing up. ~ George Pattison

Profit is vital to human well-being. Profit is the payment to entrepreneurs just as wages are payments to labor, interest to capital and rent to land. In order to earn profits in free markets, entrepreneurs must identify and satisfy human wants and do so in a way that economizes on society's scarce resources. ~ Walter E. Williams

Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. ~ David Harvey

I'm pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being - alternative, that is, to GDP, on which the world runs. ~ John Sulston

Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors - ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply. ~ Sam Harris

As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs'
'There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution'
'Human knowledge is one thing, human well-being is another.There is no predetermined harmony between the two'
'In the struggle for life, the taste for truth is a luxury-or else a disability ~ John Gray

Strictly from the perspective of human well-being, the richest-but-warmest world characterized by the A1FI scenario would probably be superior to the poorer-but-cooler worlds at least through 2085, particularly if one considers the numerous ways GDP per capita advances human well-being. ~ Indur M. Goklany

The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand - that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this moment - is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in the first place. Although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our being itself. ~ Sam Harris

Using figure B, we can stipulate that an existential risk is equivalent to (i) all red-dot catastrophes, and (ii) any black-dot catastrophe that significantly compromises human well-being.* ~ Phil Torres

Why indeed are the policies of the virtual world so very different from business as usual in the real world? Even as we accept the answer - because virtual-world designers focus on human happiness while real-world policy designers focus on other things - that answer boggles the mind. Why in heaven's name has public policy ever focused on anything other than happiness? When did we decide that human well-being was not the most important thing? ~ Edward Castronova

While one would expect a liberated society to regard bisexuality as the norm, this view would not mean that all persons would behave bisexually … The nonrepressed person recognizes his bisexual potential, he is not some ideal person midway along the Kinsey behavioral scale. People would still fall in love and form relationships, and these relationships would be homosexual as well as heterosexual. What would be different is that the social difference between the two would vanish, and once this happened we would lose the feeling of being limited, of having to choose between an exclusively straight or exclusively gay world. ~ Dennis Altman

The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well. ~ Eric Bogosian

Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet. I call them the frequency-holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through "just being." ~ Eckhart Tolle

If you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, 'Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear. ~ Lemony Snicket

I can say, 'Well, I'm a male. I'm a male human. I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author ... ' If I go to a religious point of view, I will say, 'I am a soul. I am a spirit.' If I go into science, I will say, 'I am energy. I am light.' But the truth is I have no idea what I am. ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

A lot of people who want to see the short story have a renaissance of readership - they tend to think of short stories, and sometimes poems too, as being well-suited to the way we now live, with all of these broken-up bits of time. I hope they're right, but my sense is that our fiction reading has become, if anything, more cherished as a kind of escape from fragmentation. ~ Lorin Stein

Crema Seamans," Ethan repeated thoughtfully. "It's like a soup made from ... various semens. A medley of semens. It's a flavour of Campbell's soup that got discontinued immediately."
"Stop it, Ethan, you're being totally graphic," said Cathy Kiplinger.
"Well, he is a graphic artist," said Goodman. ~ Meg Wolitzer

To a modern student, pre-industrial politics appear to be virtually soaked in religion, both in the sense that rulers devoted much attention to religious questions [...] and in the sense that everyone talked endlessly about it, justifying and vilifying a vast range of action in religious terms. [...]

... the pre-modern world was poor in organization. Modern people are members of an immense variety of associations, both local and nationwide, or indeed international, being organized as voters, artists, scholars, scientists, antivivisectionists, devotees of this sport or that, consumers and so forth in addition to (if they so wish) as believers. But pre-industrial society was less differentiated, less wealthy and far less well equipped with means of communication. Hence there might be little or no organization above the level of household or village apart from that provided by religion. This automatically endowed religion with political importance, [...] but it also meant that religion united under its umbrella numerous activities that would nowadays be pursued under umbrellas of their own. [...] Pre-modern religion could be about anything and everything. ~ Patricia Crone

A quiet mind is one that is willing to speak the truth that is felt internally. It is a mind that has not yet been conditioned to accept a reality that is being imposed upon it by well-meaning adults and cultural and religious teachings. ~ Wayne Dyer

In any case, I was less unhappy than the teammate who wondered whether the purported tribute of being a "well-rounded detective" was a jibe around his weight. ~ Edward Conlon

Gustavo Tiberius speaking."

"It's so weird you do that, man," Casey said, sounding amused. "Every time I call."

"It's polite," Gus said. "Just because you kids these days don't have proper phone etiquette."

"Oh boy, there's the Grumpy Gus I know. You miss me?"

Gus was well aware the others could hear the conversation loud and clear. He was also aware he had a reputation to maintain. "Hadn't really thought about it."

"Really."

"Yes."

"Gus."

"Casey."

"I miss you."

"I miss you too," Gus mumbled into the phone, blushing fiercely.

"Yeah? How much?"

Gus was in hell. "A lot," he said truthfully. "There have been allegations made against my person of pining and moping. False allegations, mind you, but allegations nonetheless."

"I know what you mean," Casey said. "The guys were saying the same thing about me."

Gus smiled. "How embarrassing for you."
"Completely. You have no idea."
"They're going to get you packed up this week?"
"Ah, yeah. Sure. Something like that."
"Casey."
"Yes, Gustavo."
"You're being cagey."
"I have no idea what you mean. Hey, that's a nice Hawaiian shirt you've got on. Pink? I don't think I've seen you in that color before."

Gus shrugged. "Pastor Tommy had a shitload of them. I think I could wear one every day for the rest of the year and not re ~ T.J. Klune

I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest for very long, being all so much the same. But in truth I have a list of a hundred places in my own town I haven't been yet. Quaking bogs to walk on; ponds I've never seen in the fall (I've seen them in the summer - but that's a different pond). That list gets longer every year, the more I learn, and doubtless it will grow until the day I die. So many glades; so little time. ~ Bill McKibben

Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of ~ Holly Bourne

I've been absent from you too long. I miss you so badly and yet this being apart makes me realise you're not simply the faithful man who loves me so astonishingly well, but an angel, sent for some unfathomable reason to look out for me. I should have realised this truth years ago because you are so extraordinary, so unlike other men, so unlike me, this weak, vain, faithless creature you have been so intent on saving from himself. I should have realised from the first moment I saw you in that trench, when I fell so badly in love with you and hoped you wouldn't notice. Or perhaps not then, but later, when you saved my life so often just by lending me courage when I was half-mad from fear. How much courage you had to spare – I will never forget. But angels are courageous, aren't they? I should know. I have never understood why I deserved such grace.

I don't have your faith, Patrick, or your love of God. I am uncertain and afraid, I wish you were with me now, not just in spirit, as I know you are and always have been, but here in body. I need to cower behind you, because if God is real He might be kinder knowing you loved me.

If angels need to pray, pray for me. ~ Marion Husband

In our offices and places of work we love to tell others what to do.We denigrate them.We compare their work unfavourably with our own.We are always in competition.We show off and gossip.Our dream is of being well treated and we dream of treating others badly ... ~ Hanif Kureishi

There is no significant difference between human activities and those by amoebas and even bacteria, well, on the GRAND SCALE. ~ Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov

Even when one is doing well, one still worries that things might go badly again in the future. This is an old observation based on human experience. ~ Wolfgang Schauble

Using SROI to explore the value of our online question and answer service, askTheSite, helped us develop new mechanisms for speaking to young people and gain a real insight into the impact of our work. The project enabled us to demonstrate YouthNets commitment to robust impact measurement as well as our commercial approach to project evaluation. Perhaps most importantly, being able to assign a monetary value to askTheSite has enabled YouthNet to convey to current and potential funders how valuable the service is for both young people and the wider society in a language that they understand ~ Sarah McCoy

On the 11th of every month my friend elizabeth would say, "well we made it through another month. so do we get her back now?" we always giggled, but we really did expect to get her back. its not human to let go of love, even when it's dead.
we expected one of these monthly anniversaries to be the Final Goodbye. we figured that we'd said all our goodbyes, and given up all the tears we had to give. we'd passed the test and would get back what we'd lost. but instead, every anniversary hurt more, and every anniversary felt like she was further away from coming back. the idea that there wouldn't be a final goodbye- that was a hard goodbye in itself and, at that point, still an impossible goodbye. no private eye has to tell you it's a long goodbye.
... the loss just doesn't go away- it gets bigger the longer you look at it. ~ Rob Sheffield

An order of government, established by such an all-wise, powerful being, must be good and perfect, and must be calculated to promote the permanent peace, happiness, and well-being of all his subjects. ~ Orson Pratt

So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world-there's not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of than any other country ever had on the face of the earth-and yet we've got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. ~ Will Rogers

It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity. ~ John Green

Irresponsibility. Maria's never been irresponsible. When she was little, she was responsible for protecting everybody else from her own shit around her gender - responsible for making sure her parents didn't have to have a weird kid. Of course, then they had a weird, sad kid anyway, right? Whatever. That's when responsibility at the expense of self became a habit: she did not care about school, but she knew her parents would be sad if she didn't go to college, since certain things are expected from you when you do well on standardized tests, so she scraped by and paid attention. Then, with drugs, it's like, she took them all, but always in such moderation that it wasn't really dangerous. Even when she was throwing up or incoherent, it was in a controlled situation. She never went to jail, never had the police bring her home, never got caught breaking curfew or went to the hospital or anything. And then she came to New York, paid her rent, had a job, kept her head down, had relationships with people where making the relationship run smoothly was more important than being present in it. Which did not work. It's clear that being responsible has not been a positive force in her life. It has been fucking everything up. ~ Imogen Binnie

And Yet the Books
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Human beings have a deeply ingrained habit of passivity, which is strengthened by the relatively long period that we spend under the control of parents and schoolmasters. Moments of intensity are also moments of power and control; yet we have so little understanding of this that we wait passively for some chance to galvanize the muscle that created the intensity.

But whether you use the negative methods of relaxation (which is fundamentally 'transcendental meditation') or the positive method of intense alertness and concentration, the result is the same: a realization of the enormous vistas of reality that lie outside our normal range of awareness. You recognize that the chief obstacle to such awareness is that we don't need it to get through an ordinary working day. I can make do fairly well with a narrow awareness and a moderate mount of vital energy. I have 'peak experiences' when I occasionally develop more awareness and more energy than I need for the task in hand; then I 'overflow', and realize, for a dazzled moment, what a fascinating universe I actually inhabit. It is significant that Maslow's 'peakers' were not daydreaming romantics, but healthy, practical people... ~ Colin Wilson

Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him-- caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, whether his mother is sick or well, whether he is looked up to in society or not, whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. ~ Mark Twain

What if airplane pilots said, 'my first three years were a wreck'? We worry about the safety of people at the hands of these other professions. Why don't we worry about children being at the hands of an adult, even a well-meaning adult, who doesn't know what he or she is doing? ~ Deborah

We aren't fighting right now." I blurted out.

He gave me a sidelong look. "Do you want to fight?"

"No. I hate fighting with you. Verbally, I mean. I don't mind in the gym."

I thought I detected the hint of a smile. Always a half-smile for me. Rarely a full one. "I don't like fighting with you either."

Sitting next to him there, I marveled at the warm and happy emotions springing up inside me. There was something about being around him that felt so good, that moved me in a way Mason couldn't. You can't force love, I realized, It's there or it isn't. If it's not there, you've got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you've got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.

The next words that came out of my mouth astonished me, both because they were completely unselfish and because I actually meant them.

"You should take it."

He flinched. "What?"

"Tasha's offer. You should take her up on it. It's a really great chance."

I remembered my mom's words about being ready for children. I wasn't. Maybe she hadn't been. But Tasha was. And I knew Dimitri was too. They got along really well. He could go be her guardian, have some kids with her...it would be a good deal for both of them.

"I never expected to hear you say anything like that," he told me, voice tight. "Especially after-"

"What a bitch I've been? Yeah." I tugged his coat tighter against the cold. ~ Richelle Mead

Nobility and freedom were inseparable, and the nomad was free. In the desert a man was conscious of being the lord of space, and in virtue of that lordship he escaped in a sense from the domination of time. By striking camp he sloughed off his yesterdays; and tomorrow seemed less of a fatality if its where as well as its when had yet to
come. But the townsman was a prisoner; and to be fixed in one place, ­ yesterday, today, tomorrow - was to be a target for time, the ruiner of all things. ~ Martin Lings

I am not a member of a racial minority, and I am well aware of the reality that far too many individuals of color are harassed by officers for no good reason, so it is easier for me to give the above advice than for others who have been subject to such harassment. After all, I have never been stopped by a police officer who thought I was riding a bike that looked like it might be too expensive for somebody of my race. And I cannot imagine how frustrating such prejudicial suspicion must be. But you cannot make your situation any better by refusing to cooperate with the officer, no matter how unreasonable you may think the police officer is being, or by refusing to disclose two simple things: (1) your name, and (2) whether you have some lawful reason for your curious presence or conduct at that moment at some place where the officer already knows you are, because he or she is standing right there with you. Those ~ James Duane

Public relations, in this country, is the art of adapting big business to a democracy so that the people have confidence that they are being well served and at the same time the business has freedom to serve them well. ~ Arthur W. Page

R is a velocity of measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being, and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly as almost infinite variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility, this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers, and even death. ~ Douglas Adams

I see together with Lovecraft the potting around of enormous foul masses, moving in endless waves, stepping over the last remaining crystal structures of resistance of spiritual elites; I am gazing, in ecstatic powerlessness of my hallucinatory awakening, at the shimmering black foam, the foam of black disintegration, terror of democratic stench and frightening organs of these convulsing corpses, which – in the makeup of dirty whores with a deceitful smile, with the California beach smile of European anti-fascists, with the smile of mannequin whores in flickering windows(so I would define it) - are preparing our final defeat, leading us to a destination which they themselves do not know, or, more precisely, know it too well, on the way there with relish sucking out our bone marrow; this is the hallucinatory leaden mantle of Human Rights, this faecal-vomitory discharge of Hell, although by saying so, I am insulting Hell. ~ Parvulesco

I'll tell you what: How about no more suicide attempts; no more walking off with strangers; no more trying to fight vampires with silly, human weapons--silver bullets only work on werewolves, Jocelyn--and no more holding Nachari's hand. And we'll be just fine. ~ Tessa Dawn

No matter how slick the technology or charming the person on screen, I don't think we'll ever be able to replicate the full extent of the human learning experience online. ~ Clara Parkes

Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favorite song that you knew by heart. It's like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a television show you watched for years. It's something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there's an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can't rest until I know the answers. ~ Cecelia Ahern

For everyone, well-being is a journey. The secret is committing to that journey and taking those first steps with hope and belief in yourself. ~ Deepak Chopra