Quotes About Humanity

If we're going to reach a broader audience, we have to stop thinking about that audience strictly in terms of teenage boys or even teenage girls. We need to think about things that are relevant to normal humans and not just the geeks we used to be.

I imagine a day, some time in the not too distant future when children and teenagers will be able to create their own genetically engineered machines, cure the diseases of the old and find new ways to build and extend the capabilities of humanity, moving from programming software to programing the physical world, through biology.

We've seen that there are a lot of people out there - teenagers in Topeka, housewives in Long Island, millionaire Internet start-up moguls - that all want to connect with each other about what it is to be human.

If I hear about a tsunami that hit Asia, hundreds of people have lost their lives, and you see it and you hear about it, but you still brush your teeth, still have to go on with your day. But let you get information about one person who you're close to or you're intimate with, it has an almost paralyzing effect.

A telephone number shouldn't represent a home or a car or a restaurant, but instead a person.

Here we were, the only seven humans in space, repairing a telescope whose only purpose is to enrich the minds of people on planet Earth and increase our understanding of the workings of the universe. I can think of no better peaceful use of space for all humankind.

Whether it's a song or a television show, or a book or poem, art is the thing that cracks me open and encourages me to go on a deeper journey to find my own compassion and empathy and humanity.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

People with HIV and AIDS are nothing to be afraid of. They are people just like every single one of us, and each has a story to tell. These people should be helped, embraced, and not dismissed. We need to open our hearts and our minds to them, and we just may learn we're pretty much all the same.

Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.

Almost every person that I had a preconception of, I was wrong. With Edward Teller, I was right. He was an autocrat and a technocrat, with no feeling for humanity.

We need art. We've been telling stories since the beginning. As human beings, we need it for our survival.

Some of the most morally conscious, kindest, most compassionate people are in the entertainment industry, people who want to affect the world and make it a better place through telling human, heartfelt stories.

I like telling stories about people with problems. I can't really put it much simpler than that.

I think the basic thing that happened is we have lost our story. Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories.

History, at its best, always tells us as much indirectly about ourselves as it does directly about our predecessors, and it is often most revealing when it deals with episodes and phenomena that we find repulsive.

Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I just thought literature is a thing that human beings do.

I'm always looking for something that tells me a little bit about what it means to be human. That's how I measure the success of any artistic endeavor.

Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.

Deep down, I know that I am a child of God who has inherited divine capacities; some of them I strive to develop, others are left languishing. I also have a human side. I lose my temper, lose patience and sometimes judge others and myself.

I know I lost my temper, but I tried to be human along the way.

With the Internet, we can communicate instantly across the globe, but the net also makes it possible for us to shrink ever further into our own skins - a state of being that neither suits the human temperament nor provides ground for further growth.

I feel that a lot of human spirituality stems from the belief that we are unique and special in the universe, but maybe we are just what happens when there is proper temperature and proper distance from the right type of star.

I never go to temples, but when I see a child, I see God in them.