Quotes About Humanity

It occurred to me that human beings didn't live beyond a hundred because they simply weren't up for it. Psychologically, I mean.

mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness

No. Es por todo. Parece imposible vivir sin hacer daño la gente.

Seriously, if there was a needier species in the universe, I have yet to meet it.

Of course, most parents love their children instantly. But I mention it here because I still find it a remarkable thing. Where was that love before? Where did you acquire it from? The way it is suddenly there, total and complete, as sudden as grief, but in reverse, is one of the wonders about being human.

Andrew Martin

About how human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called 'tree'. To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.

There are a lot of idiots in your species. Lots and lots. You are not one of them. Hold your ground.

As well as religion, human history is full of depressing things like colonization, disease, racism, sexism, homophobia, class snobbery, environmental destruction, slavery, totalitarianism, military dictatorships, inventions of things which they had no idea how to handle (the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon), the victimization of clever people, the worshipping of idiotic people, boredom, despair, periodic collapses, and catastrophes within the psychic landscape.

The humans are an arrogant species, defined by violence and greed. They have taken their home planet, the only one they currently have access to, and placed it on the road to destruction. They have created a world of divisions and categories and have continually failed to see the similarities among themselves.

Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare, routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace. (104)

Humanity is experiencing an extraordinary burst of evolutionary change, driven by good old-fashioned Darwinian natural selection. But it is selection among ideas, not among genes.

Omnes mundum facimus.

Greenspan's eventual explanation for the growing gap between stock prices and actual productivity was that, fortuitously, the laws of nature had changed -- humanity had reached a happy stage of history where bullshit could be used as rocket fuel.

Instead of looking at humans as potential threats, the Silent Striders look upon them as mere pawns in a much bigger game, much like themselves.

Words originated, as did the concept of God, with our species.

Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one.

The same heart beats in every human breast.

Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear -- And struck his finger on the place, And said -- Thou ailest here, and here.

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

Yes, in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown,Dotting the shoreless watery wild,We mortal millions live alone.

Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

We mortal millions live alone.