“Perhaps it is true that every human being is a potential monster, but if we disregard potentialities, then humankind can be divided into two main categories: human beings and human beasts.”

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 30
Context: Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.

Source: They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: Human potentialities constitute the world's greatest resource, but at the moment only a tiny fraction of them is being realized. The possibility of tapping and directing these vast resources of human possibility provide the religion of the future with a powerful long-term motive. An equally powerful short-term motive is to ensure the fullest possible development and flowering of individual personalities. In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.

Source: 1940s, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942), p. 134

Banker to the Poor, A Conversation With Jim Yong Kim, October, 14

Source: Elephants Can Remember