Quotes About Human

Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness

For to nothing does a stability of human results attach so much as it does to the workings in the way of virtue, since these are held to be more abiding even than the sciences: and of these last again the most precious are the most abiding, because the blessed live in them most and most continuously, which seems to be the reason why they are not forgotten.

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the philosophy of human affairs; but more frequently Political or Social Science.

since to avoid the painful and aim at the pleasurable is one of the most obvious tendencies of human nature.

For there are two reasons why human beings face danger calmly: they may have no experience of it, or they may have means to deal with it: thus when in danger at sea people may feel confident about what will happen either because they have no experience of bad weather, or because their experience gives them the means of dealing with it.

Fourth, it would make no sense for an inability to defend oneself by physical means to be a source of shame, while an inability to defend oneself by verbal means was not, since the use of words is more specifically human than the use of the body.

The end toward which all human acts are directed is happiness.

Aristotle was to verge from his mentor in the Poetics, recognizing the light both tragic drama and epic poetry shed on the human condition.

Pero a todas las cosas de que puede disponer el hombre, puede darse un destino bueno o malo, y la riqueza es una de estas cosas.

If the pleasure is immediate and the pain distant, or if the profit is immediate and the punishment distant. This is the kind of thing that moves weak-willed people, and there is no human impulse that is not liable to moral weakness.

The case is similar with the idea as well: even if there is some one good thing that is predicated [of things] in common, or there is some separate thing, itself by itself, it is clear that it would not be subject to action or capable of being possessed by a human being.

It was the first time the features and formative processes of the desert had made me pause and absorb just how small and brave we are, we the human race.

All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

Training was one thing, reality another, and no one could be sure that the ancient human instincts of self-preservation would not take over in an emergency.

Men had sought beauty in many forms—in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.

The knowledge that [he] had passed a loveless, institutionalized childhood and had escaped from his origins by prodigies of pure intellect, at the cost of all other human qualities, helped one to understand him—but not to like him.

What had been a perceived threat, a lien in a sense on future human behavior, was quickly reduced to a historical curiosity.

Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation. But however far they travel from their native world, human beings can never escape the diurnal rhythm, set ages ago by its cycle of light and darkness.

The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer, the brain and nervous system of the ship.

The evidence is confused with mysticism—perhaps the prime aberration of the human mind.

mysticism –perhaps the main aberration of the human mind.

From our point of view, human beings are astonishingly xenophobic. There are not many examples in our data base of spacefarers who are as sociologically backward as your species.