“The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity’s prime characteristic.”

“Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself, above human frailty.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself in acts of bravery and heroism.”

Alexander Hamilton book The Farmer Refuted

“Benevolence is the characteristic element of humanity.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

“It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

“A human is a complicated organic/electrical system, which is immersed in a culture. Try raising a monkey like a human, it won't work, you need the human's certain brain characteristics (including self-reflection) in order to create a truly intelligent creature. The brain processes inputs and perception in very particular ways, and I think until we understand the underlying processes better, there is no way to really simulate it in software. Computers will continue to be good at simplistic analysis, and raw processing power, but the subtlety of emotions is something intrinsic to the human organism and culture.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

“Because girls are raised to specialize in a certain set of human characteristics, would they not, then, bring to science a different sensibility? Does that sensibility have the right to be represented in science—or, for that matter, in business, politics, law, or medicine?”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

“Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

“Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist