Quotes About Humanity

Donner Party Forsaken, fucking in the cold, eating each other, lost runny noses, complaining all the time like so many people that we know

Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart.

We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.* 12

Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

our species is the only one not allowed to go to the vet to be painlessly put out of our misery.

Returning to humanity's need for comfort, it is, of course, real, but isn't there something childish in the belief that the universe owes us comfort, as of right?

We are uneasily aware that a similar catastrophe[, that of an immense meteorite or comet hitting the earth and causing massive global extinction,] could hit us at any moment... [T]he odds that it will happen in some unfortunate individual's lifetime are near certainty... And the unfortunate individuals concerned will probably not be human, for statistical likelihood is that we shall be extinct before that anyway.

Dan Dennett reminds us that the common cold is universal to all human peoples in much the same way as religion is, yet we would not want to suggest that colds benefit us.

If your pet is dying in pain, you will be condemned for cruelty if you do not summon the vet to give him a general anaesthetic from which he will not come round. But if your doctor performs exactly the same merciful service for you when you are dying in pain, he runs the risk of being prosecuted for murder.

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity.

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.

We humans give ourselves such airs, even aggrandizing our poky little 'sins' to the level of cosmic significance!

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. ALBERT EINSTEIN

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

Only human beings guide their behaviour by a knowledge of what happened before they were born and a preconception of what may happen after they are dead; thus only humans find their way by a light that illuminates more than the patch of ground they stand on. P. B. and J. S. MEDAWAR, The Life Science (1977)

Obviously it was happenstance, but it did change my opinion of human nature. I now saw war as a constant, akin to wildfires. They break out unless you work actively to prevent them. It's an atavistic thing, buried deep in our DNA.

The bombing started up again, with explosions all around us, in broad daylight, but no one in the restaurant even flinched. Iraqis seemed numb after a quarter century under Saddam's whip-hand rule. It was heartbreaking to see what a harsh dictatorship can do to the human soul. In less than a week, I had grown almost inured to explosions and fires.