Introduction
Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)
Context: In my presentation I... follow the genetic method. The essential idea... is that the order in which knowledge has been acquired by the human race will be a good teacher for its acquisition by the individual. The sciences came in a certain order; an order determined by human interest and inherent difficulty. Mathematics and astronomy were the first sciences really worth the name; later came mechanics, optics, and so on. At each stage of its development the human race has had a certain climate of opinion, a way of looking, conceptually, at the world. The next glimmer of fresh understanding had to grow out of what was already understood. The next move forward, halting shuffle, faltering step, or stride with some confidence, was developed upon how well the [human] race could then walk. As for the human race, so for the human child. But this is not to say that to teach science we must repeat the thousand and one errors of the past, each ill-directed shuffle. It is to say that the sequence in which the major strides forward were made is a good sequence in which to teach them. The genetic method is a guide to, not a substitute for, judgement.
“The human race has improved everything but the human race.”
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
In "Wages are Going Lower!" (1951), William Joseph Baxter wrote, "One might almost say that the human race seems to have improved everything except people." Variations of this quote have appeared since both with and without attribution to Adlai Stevenson, but no documented connection to Stevenson is known.
Misattributed
“Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.”
Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer
Orson Welles, "Race hate must be outlawed" (an editorial), Free World (July, 1944). http://www.wellesnet.com/orson-welles-race-hate-must-outlawed/ <br class="br">Source: [Higham, Charles, Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1985, 216, 0-312-31280-6, https://books.google.com/books?id=pJBlaIC-VG4C&lpg=PA216&dq=%22race%20hate%20isn't%20human%20nature%22&pg=PA216#v=onepage&q=%22race%20hate%20isn't%20human%20nature%22&f=false]
“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”
Markus Zusak book The Book Thief
Source: The Book Thief
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist
Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861)
Context: If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.<!--p.76
“One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
“History is the biography of the human race.”
Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology
Other
“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio
Canto XII, lines 95–96 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”
Max Brooks book World War Z
Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
