“Man is a truly cunning creature.”
(abridged tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Birds+451) <br class="br">Birds (414 BC)
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Aristophanés56
Athenian playwright of Old Comedy -448–-386 BCRelated quotes
Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian
Source: For The Sake of Heaven (1945), p. 44
“An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.”
H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau
Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 21: The Reversion of the Beast Folk
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer
As quoted in The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insiders Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers (2001) by Karl Inglesias, p. 4. This has also appeared on the internet in several slightly paraphrased forms.
Context: The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher
Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 1: opening sentence of chapter 1.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Book VI, Chapter 7.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)
“Man is the creature of circumstances.”
Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer
"The Philanthropist".