“What's the point of God making us human if He doesn't want us to act like we're human?'
'To see if we can rise above our natures,'Megan said.”

“Conservatives believe that human nature is what makes us imperfectible. Liberals believe that human nature can be changed and perfected.”

“The way that we behave contains way more information than we know. And part of the dream that surrounds our articulated knowledge has been extracted as a consequence of us watching each other behave, and telling stories about it over thousands and thousands and thousands of years, extracting out patterns of behavior that characterize humanity, and trying to represent them party through imitations but also through drama, mythology, and literature, and art, and all of that – to represent what we're like so we can understand what we're like. That process of understanding is what we see unfolding at least in part in the Biblical stories. It's halting and partial and awkward and contradictory and all of that, which is one of the things that makes it so complex, but I see in it the struggle of humanity to rise above its animal forebears and to become conscious of what it means to be human, and that's a very difficult thing.”

“I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female.”

“Let us teach our children, and all Americans, to rise above brutality and bigotry and to be champions of liberty, human dignity, and equality.”

“The Devil doesn't make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn't make us mean. Rather, when we're mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.”

“Christ's mission is to release the divine into our conscious knowing. He awakens the impulse in humanity to rise above his lower nature and be aware of his higher nature that dwells within.”

“The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”

“Seeing our creation’s name in print made us feel like minor gods; we had summoned into existence a human being, or at least the illusion of one.”

“God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.”