Humans Quotes

Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. ~ Desmond Morris

Despite some remaining puzzles, there's no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives ~ Michael Behe

When the human being sings he lends expression to the great wise ways in which the world was made. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported. ~ Samuel Johnson

It's better not to hold your feelings inside too much and express them to a dear one freely, than to pay thousands of dollars to a psychiatrist for the same outburst of emotions later. Emotions are a bonding mechanism for humans. So, use 'em, abuse 'em and utilize 'em. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a fly-swatter under it... this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. ~ Liu Cixin

Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on human being whose affections are without a top-root! ~ Robert Southey

The capacity of a human community to shape it's future. ~ Peter Senge

Humans were terribly odd creatures. ~ C. Alexander London

Thirty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it's a thousand times more, especially for a dog, whose step is like a quarter of a human's. ~ Etgar Keret

Hearts, you say? You Humans are always so quick to speak of such things. As though you carry your hearts in the very palms of your hands. But this eye of mine perceives all. There is nothing that it overlooks. If this eye cannot see a thing, then it does not exist. That is the assumption under which I have always fought. What is this "heart"? If I tear open that chest of yours, will I see it there? If I smash open that skull of yours, will I see it there? ~ Tite Kubo

It is natural that we face obstacles in pursuit of our goals. But if we remain passive, making no effort to solve the problems we meet, conflicts will arise and hindrances will grow. Transforming these obstacles into opportunities is a challenge to our human ingenuity. ~ Dalai Lama

Is it not strange how humans will resort to the most inhumane of actions as the first plausible solution? Why are we such a feral bloodthirsty species when we are supposedly the enlightened ones? Are we guardians ... or just mindless butchers? ~ Dimitri Zaik

It is a fearful mistake for us to neglect the study of the Bible to investigate theories that are misleading, diverting minds from the words of Christ to fallacies of human production. ~ Ellen G. White

Prison is not a place for humans. Period. It's just an animal house. ~ Lil Boosie

Fairy tales are just true stories that humans have chosen not to believe in any more. Besides, this is Myths and Legends where dreams and nightmares come to life. ~ Stacie Simpson

We have to ask, 'How can we break a huge challenge like sending humans to Mars into a series of doable, affordable steps? How can we break that problem down into chunks in order to keep making progress?' ~ Ellen Stofan

This is an accessible work of philosophy in the best sense, sharply focused on matters of vital human concern and free of the domain tics that mar even allegedly popular works by Anglo-American philosophers. ~ Mark Lilla

I understand that all humans sin,
But why was I damned to this hell on earth in this flammable skin? ~ QuietStormPoet

Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary. ~ Jean Baker Miller

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Being a human means waking up in this world, where we all have to work and slog to put food on the table. ~ Jason Mraz

Something critical happens when the cadre of bilinguals learns to read imported scrolls: they gain entry into a library. I use the word "library" to refer not to a physical building but, more broadly, to the collectivity of accumulated writings. . . . humans possess an ever-increasing store of writings, the totality of which I call the library. The transformation of an oral culture into a written one means, first and foremost, the potential entry of bilinguals into a library. ~ Minae Mizumura

People need motivation to do anything. I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. ~ Jim Carrey

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps. ~ Nathalie Sarraute

I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment. ~ Bernie Sanders

As human beings, why does it take somebody to feel like they're close to us for us to see their humanity? Why can't we see the humanity in people that are distant from us? ~ Michael B. Jordan

As for the Republicans
how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage' ... ) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change. ~ Judith Curry

Life uses information (stored in DNA) to capture energy (which it stores in a chemical called ATP) to create order. Humans burn prodigious amounts of energy - we generate about 10,000 times as much energy per gram as the sun. The sun is hotter only because it is much bigger. We use energy to create and maintain intricate cellular and bodily complexity, the opposite of entropy, just as we do in the economy, where the harnessing of power from burning fuel enables us to build skyscrapers and aeroplanes. ~ Matt Ridley

God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded. ~ Seneca The Younger

three conclusions: (1) at least weak forms of superintelligence are achievable by means of biotechnological enhancements; (2) the feasibility of cognitively enhanced humans adds to the plausibility that advanced forms of machine intelligence are feasible - because even if we were fundamentally unable to create machine intelligence (which there is no reason to suppose), machine intelligence might still be within reach of cognitively enhanced humans; and (3) when we consider scenarios stretching significantly into the second half of this century and beyond, we must take into account the probable emergence of a generation of genetically enhanced populations - voters, inventors, scientists - with the magnitude of enhancement escalating rapidly over subsequent decades. ~ Nick Bostrom

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not. ~ Ben Folds

The Human subject is the most important thing. My work is abstract in the sense of having been designed and composed, but it is not abstract in the sense of having no human content I want to communicate. I want the idea to strike right away. ~ Jacob Lawrence

Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share. ~ Patricia Hickman

It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe. ~ Freeman Dyson

Other animals are exceptionally good at identifying and reacting to predators, rivals and friends. They never act as if they believe that rivers or trees are inhabited by spirits who are watching. In all these ways, other animals continually demonstrate their working knowledge that they live in a world brimming with other minds as well as their knowledge of those minds' boundaries. their understanding seems more acute, pragmatic, and frankly, better than ours at distinguishing real from fake. So, I wonder, do humans really have a better developed Theory of Mind than other animals? ...Children talk to dolls for years, half believing or firmly believing that the doll hears and feels and is a worthy confidante. Many adults pray to statues, fervently believing that they're listening. ...All of this indicates a common human inability to distinguish conscious minds from inanimate objects, and evidence from nonsense. Children often talk to a fully imaginary friends whom they believe listens and has thoughts. Monotheism might be the adult version. ...In the world's most technologically advanced, most informed societies, a majority people take it for granted that disembodied spirits are watching, judging, and acting on them. Most leaders of modern nations trust that a Sky-God can be asked to protect their nation during disasters and conflicts with other nations. All of this is theory of mind gone wild, like an unguided fire hose spraying the whole universe with presumed consciousness. ~ Carl Safina

I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Throughout history, independent minds have carried mankind forward. Whether they identified how to make fire or manufacture tools, develop rational philosophy or create man-glorifying art, pioneer scientific knowledge or invent the electric light, independent thinkers have created the goods on which human life and prosperity depend. ~ Andrew Bernstein

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

A lot of the time it feels like ... music is some sort of excuse to be a human. It's kind of like people need that excuse to go and put their arms in the air and sing their hearts out. ~ Marcus Mumford

I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. ~ C.S. Lewis

This is a human form in which every Divine entity, every Divine principle, that is to say, all the names and forms ascribed by man to God, are manifest ... You are very fortunate that you have the chance to experiences the bliss of the vision of the form, which is the form of all gods, now, in this life itself. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

I've always been interested in our flaws as human beings, just as much as the virtues. ~ Nicole Kidman

The laws of physics that deal with inertia also apply to humans, such that situations tend to remain the same over time. ~ Del Suggs

It was funny how nature reclaimed this world in its own way. It was silly to say humans were destroying the environment; we were simply changing it. Nature would persevere until the world was a barren wasteland. ~ Wildbow

Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Sociological Explanations

Sociologists theorize that people can live together in peace because of the development of a social hierarchy that ranges from dominant to submissive. Everyone in a group takes his or her place in the hierarchy. A certain degree of anxiety around others allows people to assess the level of threat that they pose, and helps maintain the balance between aggression and inhibition.
However, people with social anxiety tend to misinterpret others' behavior as more aggressive or powerful than it really is. As a result, a socially anxious person often will become overly submissive--blushing, not making eye contact, freezing, or withdrawing.
Sociologists believe this response may be the result of a fundamental fear of rejection. In monkeys, apes, and humans, being left to fend for oneself usually is a threat to survival. In social anxiety, people may see being judged as a threat to their position in the group. To them, rejection means failure.

Kyoto went through her day at school constantly apologizing to everyone. Whenever she walked down the hall, opened her locker, sat down in an empty seat, or got in line in the cafeteria, she always said "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry." Most of the time, she didn't know why she was apologizing. She always wanted to please others.
Kyoto's mother took her to see a psychologist because of Kyoto's anxiety. The psychologist helped Kyoto see that she misinterpreted others' behavior as being more ~ Heather Moehn

Our children are humans and deserve to be treated respectfully. Discipline doesn't include raging, screaming, abusing, neglecting, humiliating, or shaming our kids. God never treats us like that. That sort of discipline never produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. ~ Jen Hatmaker

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. ~ H.L. Mencken

As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away. ~ Alexander MacLaren

We were the creatures desired throughout the ages ... foolish humans didn't even realize it, living in their own little world. ~ Kay Harding

There are no limits on how much the heart can love, the mind can imagine, or the human being can achieve. ~ Lynne Cox

Evil is an extreme manifestation of human unconsciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The human heart is no small thing, for it can embrace so much. ~ Origen

Humans are replaceable, seconds are not."--Darth Chratis ~ Sean Williams

Do you know, Valerio, that even the least among all humans is so great that life is far too short to love him? ~ Georg Buchner

The world's leaders should be forced to take a reader's license. Only when they have read five thousand - no, make that ten thousand - books will they be anywhere near qualified to understand humans and how they behave. ~ Nina George

Because we have viewed other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge. ~ Tom Regan

How very like humans to pervert a message of love and peace to make it into an ideology of war and oppression to serve their own ends. ~ Christina Engela

I wasn't good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy. ~ Alison Moyet

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product. ~ Peter Singer

Most humans expressed affection by pressing their lips together, a simple act, so why would anyone feel the need to research the process? ~ Melissa Landers

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people. ~ Kenneth Lonergan

We are not just studying human history, we are shaping it. ~ Jason Russell

You are a human with one life and it is up to you to make it the best life you can. ~ Dan Howell

Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it; there must come a reaction. Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Some philosophers are drawn to the subject [of philosophy] via their interest in the nature and structure of the world external to us. Others are drawn to it by an interest in the capacities that make humans distinctive in the world. I am a philosopher of the latter sort. My work thus far has been clustered around the nexus of knowledge, communication, and human action. ~ Jason Stanley

His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream ... an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered ... ~ Isabel Allende

We need to have nature back in our atmosphere. There might be a turning point of going backward - within a few thousand years we are going back to the Stone Age! There are many scenarios [with] the robot technologies: Humans no longer need to walk; machines can produce products and food and everything. You might not be able to recognize what's false and what is real. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do. ~ Dan Harmon

Human beings are not black and white. ~ Hugh Panaro

I'm going to miss you, girls," he told the plants.
"You have names for them?" croaked Jane.
"This is Beatrice."
"You're not really a people person, are you?"
"Humans piss me off. ~ Adam Baker

The cause of these great extinctions, the most extensive in the seventy-million-year record for mammals, is a mystery. The two prevailing guesses, climatic environmental pressure or the destruction caused by human immigration in these regions, are at a stalemate. Nearly all regions of extinction were briefly inhabited by early humans, which is why some feel they played roles. I was not there at the time, so I can only speculate, but surely a global catastrophe of some sort triggered the cataclysm. ~ Stephen J. O'Brien

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws. ~ William Blackstone

I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology. ~ Jason Silva

Besides, animals don't even have time. Only humans have time. It's what makes us different. ~ Douglas Coupland

Put God behind everything-human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn. ~ Abraham Lincoln

What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature.
It has become a symbol now ... That is the way human beings deal with the world. ~ Lian Hearn

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been ... one of the primary sources of progress. ~ John Stuart Mill

The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living. ~ Roger Scruton

[D]iscipline consists in this, that the men who undergo the instruction and have followed it for a certain time are completely deprived of everything which is precious to a man-of the chief human property, rational freedom-and become submissive, machine-like implements of murder in the hands of their organized hierarchic authorities. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You can't be angry to someone who is just sad. We all are humans. We can't control our tears which is streaming down our faces.. ~ Jane Kusina

For many Westerners, "it's natural" seems to mean "it's good." This view is wrong and comes from shopping in supermarkets and living in landscaped environments. Plants evolved toxins to deter animals, fungi, and bacteria from eating them. The list of "natural" foods that need processing to detoxify them goes on and on. Early potatoes were toxic, and the Andean peoples ate clay to neutralize the toxin. Even beans can be toxic without processing. In California, many hunter-gatherer populations relied on acorns, which, similar to manioc, require a labor intensive, multiday leaching process. Many small-scale societies have similarly exploited hardy, tropical plants called cycads for food. But cycads contain a nerve toxin. If not properly processed, they can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis, and death. Numerous societies, including hunter-gatherers, have culturally evolved an immense range of detoxification techniques for cycads. By contrast with our species, other animals have far superior abilities to detoxify plants. Humans, however, lost these genetic adaptations and evolved a dependence on cultural know-how, just to eat. ~ Joseph Henrich

The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess. ~ Kobe Bryant

I want my images to achieve two things in this regard - to be an elegy to a world that is tragically vanishing, to make people see what beauty is disappearing. Also, to try and show that animals are sentient creatures equally as worthy of life as humans. ~ Nick Brandt

For humans, honesty is a matter of degree. Engineers are always honest in
matters of technology and human relationships. That's why it's a good idea
to keep engineers away from customers, romantic interests, and other people
who can't handle the truth. ~ Scott Adams

A lot of people are waking up to human history, but so many people have been conditioned by the government controlled media to think that it's cool not to care. ~ Alex Jones

If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too. ~ Andrew Greeley

The woman's mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities. ~ Margaret Thatcher

When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, 'Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me. ~ Francis Collins

The human community and individual people are more likely to hurt or undernourish children they think of as 'bodies' to be used. Cultures and people are more likely to raise children to be mere economic interns rather than fully developed humans if they see children as 'bodies' to be forced into certain economic and social molds. ~ Michael Gurian

The message of the United States is not nuclear power. The message of the United States is a spiritual message. It is the message of human ideals; it is the message of human dignity; it is the message of the freedom of ideas, speech, press, the right to assemble, to worship, and the message of freedom of movement of people. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

when you speak about feminism
they like to hit you with things
i call 'what about's–
what about women in the middle east
what about women in third world countries
what about focusing on them and not the problems here

and this all sounds good in theory
yes
we need to help them
yes
we need to help young girls
trapped in child marriages
yes
we need to help women
marred by acid attacks
yes
we need to help victims
of human trafficking
yes
we need to help women
who wil be imprisioned
beaten
killed
for speaking out about their sexual assault
for getting an abortion
for leaving an abusive husband

yes
we need to help them
of couse we do
it is our job as decent humans
to help them

but we can help them
and help ourselves at the same time

we can help young girls
in child marriages

and we can fight to end
the objectification of young girls
here

we can help women
marred by acid attacks

and we can work harder
to arrest abusers and assailants
here

we can help victims
of human trafficking

and we can stop stigma and violence
against sex workers
here

we can help women
who will be
imprisioned for speaking out about their sexual assault
beaten for getting an abortion
killed for lea ~ Catarine Hancock

Our societies probably work best if they mimic as closely as possible the small-scale communities of our ancestors. We certainly did not evolve to live in cities with millions of people where we bump into strangers everyone we go, are threatened by them in dark streets, sit next to them in the bus, and give them the finger in traffic jams. ~ Frans De Waal

If I say, "I am a monk." or "I am a Buddhist," these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. To be human is basic. ~ Dalai Lama

There aren't a lot of humans who speak more than one dialect of Forshan. I know all four of the major ones.'

'Impressive,' Duvall Said.

'I'm good with my tongue,' Dahl said.

'Now who's being forward?' Duvall asked. ~ John Scalzi

It wasn't only a little she-cat I bought. It was the nobility of all cats, their infinite disinterestedness, their knowledge of how to live, their affinities with the highest type of humans. ~ Colette