Quotes About Humanity

The tragedy of the human species is it has evolved the capacity of foresight, but refuses to use it.

There is nothing inhuman about an intelligent machine; it is indeed an expression of those superb intellectual capabilities that only human beings, of all the creatures on our planet, now possess.

Voltaire argued that if God did not exist Man would be obliged to invent him, and was reviled for the remark.

So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that—however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today—once benefitted our species.

Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one day venture to the stars.

Broca was quoted as saying, "I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.

Nietzsche mourns the loss of "man's belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplace-ability in the scheme of existence." For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

Whose interest does ignorance serve? If we humans bear, say, hereditary propensities toward the hatred of strangers, isn't self-knowledge the only antidote? If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: a proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright.

Writing is perhaps the greatest human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.

It is on this world that we developed our passion for exploring the Cosmos, and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny.

When all is said and done, the invention of writing must be reckoned not only as a brilliant innovation but as a surpassing good for humanity. And assuming that we survive long enough to use their inventions wisely, I believe the same will be said of the modern Thoths and Prometheuses who are today devising computers and programs at the edge of machine intelligence.

This process is called artificial selection. In the case of the Heike crab it was effected more or less unconsciously by the fishermen, and certainly without any serious contemplation by the crabs. But humans have deliberately selected which plants and animals shall live and which shall die for thousands of years.

If the aliens would only keep all the folks they abduct, our world would be a little saner.

But the creed of liberty means nothing if it is only our own liberty that excites us.

Plainly, there's something within me that's ready to believe in life after death. And it's not the least bit interested in whether there's any sober evidence for it. So I don't guffaw at the woman who visits her husband's grave and chats him up every now and then, maybe on the anniversary of his death. It's not hard to understand. And if I have difficulties with the ontological status of who she's talking to, that's all right. That's not what this is about. This is about humans being human.

In human history there a precious few whose memory we revere because they knowingly sacrificed themselves for others. For each of them, there are multitudes who did nothing.

There was a time before television, before motion pictures, before radio, before books. The greatest part of human existence was spent in such a time.

It is precisely our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically preprogrammed behavior in human beings more than in any other species… Some substantial adjustment of the relative role of each component of the triune brain is well within our powers.

Humans everywhere share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos provides the largest possible context.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.