“… We now come to a numerous tribe, that seem to make approaches even to humanity; that bear an awkward resemblance to the human form, and discover the same faint efforts at intellectual sagacity.”

“Humanity is confined to the borders of the tribe, the linguistic group, or even, in some instances, to the village ….”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

“Every intellectual effort is bent towards committing the most diversified violations upon the human being.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

“Losing the human form brings the freedom to remember your self. Losing the human form is like a spiral. It gives you the freedom to remember and this in turn makes you even freer.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

“A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

“Come on,” I said. “We have to try. The effort is utterly pointless, but inaction seems an even greater agony.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

“Payoff will come when we make better use of computers to bring communities of people together and to augment the very human skills that people bring to bear on difficult problems.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

“The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

“And so with us, she thought. We come, we go, and, as individuals, we are forgotten. But the stream of human life goes on, ever changing, but ever the same, and as the stream is fed by well-springs hoarded by Nature so the stream of humanity is fed by the store of accumulated wisdom and effort and hard-won experience of past generations.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet