Quotes About Humanity

En el mar inmenso de galaxias y estrellas, somos un apartado rincón infinitesimal; entre los infinitos arabescos de formas que componen lo real, nosotros no somos más que un garabato entre muchos.

I fear that soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilization.

we are the reflection of the idea of ourselves that we receive back from our kind.

Lucretius expresses this, wonderfully: . . . we are all born from the same celestial seed; all of us have the same father, from which the earth, the mother who feeds us, receives clear drops of rain, producing from them bright wheat and lush trees, and the human race, and the species of beasts, offering up the foods with which all bodies are nourished, to lead a sweet life and generate offspring . . . (De rerum natura, bk. II, lines 991–97) It

Se il mondo è un un pullulare di effimeri quanti di spazio e di materia, un immenso gioco a incastri di spazio e particelle elementari, noi cosa siamo? [...] Nel grande quadro della scienza contemporanea ci sono molte cose che non capiamo, e una di quelle che capiamo meno siamo noi stessi

When we seek a sure foundation on which to base decisions about our actions and thoughts, we find that a sure foundation does not exist. We do not even know whether we actually need such a foundation. We continue to make use of vague, uncertain ideas, precisely in those areas that most deeply concern us. What we call "irrational" is the code name for what we don't understand well about ourselves given the limits of our own intelligence.

That which makes us specifically human does not signify our separation from nature; it is part of that self-same nature. It's a form that nature has taken here on our planet, in the infinite play of its combinations, through the reciprocal influencing and exchanging of correlations and information among its parts.

What role do we have as human beings who perceive, make decisions, laugh, and cry, in this great fresco of the world as depicted by contemporary physics?

In the big picture of contemporary science, there are many things that we do not understand, and one of the things that we understand least about is ourselves.

Noi siamo fatti della stessa polvere di stelle di cui sono fatte le cose e sia quando siamo immersi nel dolore sia quando ridiamo e risplende la gioia non facciamo che essere quello che non possiamo che essere: parte del nostro mondo.

ogni volta che come nazione, come gruppo, come continente, o come religione, ripieghiamo in noi stessi nella celebrazione della nostra specifica identità, non stiamo facendo altro che celebrare i nostri limiti e cantare la nostra stupidità. Ogni volta che si apriamo alla diversità e ascoltiamo ciò che è diverso da noi, stiamo contribuendo all'arricchimento e all'intelligenza della razza umana. ...

If we are special we are only special in the way that everyone feels themselves to be, as every mother is to her child. Certainly not for the rest of nature.

man is what we all know.

The world citizenship I am talking about is of a very different sort. It is based on the realization that globalization has led to the point where there is no longer a space on earth that is outside civilization and that political consciousness can no longer be restricted to one country, culture, or religion and thus needs to address the fate of humanity as a whole.

The human heart is bigger than the world.

Prova de que o amor continua, em meio a toda sorte de absurdos, violências e marotices políticas e outras, e que nenhum índice de inflação, nenhum terremoto, nenhuma sinistra maquinação é capaz de cassá-lo da face da Terra.

Humanity knows no bounds to its inhumanity when it puts systems in place that justify its injustices. Legally

Man simply cannot live as the time-animal and the art-animal that he is, without history.

The world is still new . . . it seems old to us, but only seems because our lives are so short . . . our human race has been around for such a brief amount of time that the universe hasn't had the chance to detect us yet. One blink is all it needs to miss our dance through actuality.

Liberals and progressives will spend inordinate amounts of time and money to protect fish, frogs, and flies. But they do not think a 17-week-old, a 20-week-old, a 24-week-old is worth saving?

If you laugh, think, and cry; that's a full day.

Quién puede entender los mil hilos que unen las almas de los hombres y el alcance de sus palabras?

Storytelling is not something we do. Storytelling is who we are.

What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination." —Sir Ken Robinson, TED 2006