Quotes about human
page 100

Matt Ridley photo

“In behavior, as in appearance, every human individual is unique.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Yukio Mishima photo

“Human beings — they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it?”

"Sword" ("Ken"), quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 67.

Poul Anderson photo

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Javad Alizadeh photo

“It is a strange paradox: Humans drown in the water, fish drown in the land.”

Javad Alizadeh (1953) cartoonist, journalist and humorist

Quoted in Humor & Caricature (July 1995), p. 3

William Whipple photo

“A recommendation is gone thither for raising some regiments of Blacks. This, I suppose will lay a foundation for the emancipation of those wretches in that country. I hope it will be the means of dispensing the blessings of Freedom to all the human race in America.”

William Whipple (1730–1785) American signatory of the Declaration of Independence

As quoted in "This Was a Man" http://www.whipple.org/william/thiswasaman.html, by Dorothy Mansfield Vaughan

Francis Bacon photo
George Friedman photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“Earth gravity and a line of horizon is how we, as Earth humans, are accustomed to gauging spatial orientation.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Salvador Dalí photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Werner Herzog photo
Paul Klee photo

“The work as human action (genesis) is productive as well as receptive. It is continuity.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)

Björk photo

“I was talking to a friend about it recently and I told him that the thing about making that film that upset me most was how cruel Lars is to the woman he is working with. Not that I can't take it, because I'm pretty tough and completely capable of defending myself, but because my ideals of the ultimate creator were shattered. And my friend said "What did you expect? All major directors are "sexist", a maker is not necessarily an expert in human rights or female/male equality!
My answer was that you can take quite sexist film directors like Woody Allen or Stanley Kubrick and still they are the one that provide the soul to their movies. In Lars von Trier's case it is not so and he knows it. He needs a female to provide his work soul. And he envies them and hates them for it. So he has to destroy them during the filming. And hide the evidence. What saves him as an artist, though, is that he is so painfully honest that even though he will manage to cover up his crime in the "real" world (he is a genius to set things up that everybody thinks it is just his female-actress-at-the-moment imagination, that she is just hysterical or pre-menstrual), his films become a documentation of this "soul-robbery.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Breaking the Waves is the clearest example of that.
bjork."
From the www.bjork.com http://www.bjork.com 4um, posted by Björk in response to a question about her conflict with director Lars von Trier during the production of Dancer in the Dark.
Other quotes

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Omnipresence has become an ordinary human dimension.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Forces interview (1973)

David Icke photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
Ivan Goncharov photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“We had thought Mike the greatest; now we began to discover he was only human and, worse, we had our first dismaying confrontation with the fact that he would not back up his ministers.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 4, Sixty days of decision, p. 63

“The one job that machines cannot do is be a cruel plutocrat. That’s why humans are still needed.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Review of Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/i-dont-care-what-happens-to-these-characters, 2015
2010s

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
John Campbell Shairp photo

“There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Seymour Papert photo
André Gide photo
Neil Peart photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

Timothy Dalton photo

“I don't believe Bond is superman, a cardboard cut out or two-dimensional. He's got to be a human being. He’s got to be identifiable, and that's what I'm trying to be… It's not a spoof, it's not light, it's not jokey.”

Timothy Dalton (1944) British actor of stage, film and television

On his version of James Bond, reported in Edward Gross, His Name was Bond, James Bond: Timothy Dalton on the World of 007 http://web.archive.org/20000304095759/www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Film/7518/Bond_Eng/Bond_Eng.htm.

Vitruvius photo
L. David Mech photo
George William Curtis photo

“Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense!' was the reply, 'that's all very well in theory, but it doesn't work so. The returning of slaves amounts to nothing in fact. All that is obsolete. And why make all this row? Can't you hush? We've nothing to do with slavery, we tell you. We can't touch it; and if you persist in this agitation about a mere form and theory, why, you're a set of pestilent fanatics and traitors; and if you get your noisy heads broken, you get just what you deserve'. And they quoted in the faces of the abolitionists the words of Governor Edward Everett, who was not an authority with them, in that fatal inaugural address, 'The patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invited to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave'. It was as if some kindly Pharisee had said to Christ, 'Don't try to cast out that evil spirit; it may rend the body on departing'. Was it not as if some timid citizen had said, 'Don't say hard things of intemperance lest the dram-shops, to spite us, should give away the rum'? And so the battle raged. The abolitionists dashed against slavery with passionate eloquence like a hail of hissing fire. They lashed its supporters with the scorpion whip of their invective. Ambition, reputation, ortune, ease, life itself they threw upon the consuming altar of their cause. Not since those earlier fanatics of freedom, Patrick Henry and James Otis, has the master chord of human nature, the love of liberty, been struck with such resounding power. It seemed in vain, so slowly their numbers increased, so totally were they outlawed from social and political and ecclesiastical recognition. The merchants of Boston mobbed an editor for virtually repeating the Declaration of Independence. The city of New York looked on and smiled while the present United States marshal insulted a woman as noble and womanly and humane as Florence Nightingale. In other free States men were flying for their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, murdered; but still as, in the bitter days of Puritan persecution in Scotland, the undaunted voices of the Covenanters were heard singing the solemn songs of God that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak of the barren mountains, until the great dumb wilderness was vocal with praise — so in little towns and great cities were heard the uncompromising voices of these men sternly intoning the majestic words of the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, which echoed from solitary heart to heart until the whole land rang with the litany of liberty.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Douglas MacArthur photo
Don Marquis photo

“dear boss i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

“The more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

The More Complex the Society, the More Government Control We Need https://books.google.com/books?id=W3MuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT18&lpg=PT18&dq=The+more+complex+our+economy,+the+more+we+should+rely+on+the+miraculous,+self-adapting+processes+of+men+acting+freely.+No+mind+of+man+nor+any+combination+of+minds+can+even+envision,+let+alone+intelligently+control,+the+countless+human+energy+exchanges+in+a+simple+society,+to+say+nothing+of+a+complex+one.&source=bl&ots=OZxiANz5bm&sig=QP-xiNhoDNxDDMB1mcR25NuqEl4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq04eE9_LTAhVMKyYKHWh_BGEQ6AEIKjAB#v=onepage&q=The%20more%20complex%20our%20economy%2C%20the%20more%20we%20should%20rely%20on%20the%20miraculous%2C%20self-adapting%20processes%20of%20men%20acting%20freely.%20No%20mind%20of%20man%20nor%20any%20combination%20of%20minds%20can%20even%20envision%2C%20let%20alone%20intelligently%20control%2C%20the%20countless%20human%20energy%20exchanges%20in%20a%20simple%20society%2C%20to%20say%20nothing%20of%20a%20complex%20one.&f=false
Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism

Siddharth Katragadda photo
H. G. Wells photo
Max Eastman photo
Chris Murphy photo

“My truth hierarchy: (1) health care is a human right (2) climate change is an existential threat (3) the Yankees suck.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

Day 2017 Is Finally Here, Red Sox Fans" http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2017/04/03/opening-day-red-sox-social-media/"Opening, Boston Magazine, 3 April 2017.

Dana Gioia photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Eric R. Kandel photo
John Galsworthy photo
Karl Barth photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Creative aspect of language use"
Quotes 2000s, 2007-09, (3rd ed., 2009)

Clifford D. Simak photo
Stamford Raffles photo
Tom Robbins photo
Ken Ham photo
Isaiah Berlin photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“Not in its statement of God as the All-in-all, taken by itself, but in its consequent denial of the reality of man — his freedom and immortal growth in goodness — is it that pantheism betrays its insufficiency to meet the needs of the human spirit.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.77

Stanley Knowles photo
David Hume photo
Joe Haldeman photo
Arthur Helps photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Vitruvius photo
Abdul Sattar Edhi photo

“To me serving "Mazloom" (destitute & deprived of rights) is just like praying and all human beings are equal and they all deserve equal treatment, respect, care and love.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted by Dr. Javed Laghari in Monograph titled "Leaders of Pakistan" published by SZABIST, Pages 2-10 ( Vol.1 June-2009 http://www.szabist.edu.pk/Publications/Books/LeadershipBK-CP-09.pdf/). Retrieved on July 21, 2016

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.”

Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Edith Stein photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo

“If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 7 “The River: The End” (p. 190)

John Gray photo
Frank Wilczek photo
Richard Leakey photo
Murray Leinster photo

“He’d caused the First Native War on Mars, by taking advantage of the fact that at that time human law had not defined the killing of Martians as murder.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

The Aliens, p. 92 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1957).
Short fiction, Anthropological Note (1957)

William Saroyan photo

“The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Lewis Mumford photo
Carl Sagan photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Will Eisner photo
Robert Costanza photo

“Ecological Economics studies the ecology of humans and the economy of nature, the web of interconnections uniting the economic subsystem to the global ecosystem of which it is a part.”

Robert Costanza (1950) American economist

Robert Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability. Columbia University Press, 1992.

“Success in the sociologists' aim might lead, in T. S. Eliot's phrase, to "systems so perfect that no one would need to be good." This view forgets that men long ago committed themselves to the endeavor to control their own collective behavior, not only in the ways sanctioned by the churches but in others, by making it to men's interest to do good. And they have increasingly based the endeavor on an understanding of natural laws of human behavior, those of economics, for example. So that the question is not: Shall this kind of control be undertaken? but: Where shall it stop? A sociologist might also argue that his religious critics have more faith in him than in their own doctrine, the doctrine that man is infinitely tough and resourceful and is not easily cheated of his freedom to sin. What God has given no man can take away, certainly no sociologist. More seriously, he might argue that the social sciences are not in train to eliminate morality but to make greater demands of it. A sociology that shows us unsuspected or not hitherto understood ways in which men are bound up with one another invites more refined answers to the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?"”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

George C. Homans (1956), "Giving a dog a bad name." in: The Listener, Vol. 56. p. 233; Reprinted in: George C. Homans (1962), Sentiments & activities; essays in social science https://archive.org/details/sentimentsactivi00homa, p. 117-8

Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“The history of human civilisation is a history of mutual borrowings.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.28

“The tendency toward mysticism is ingrained in human nature. Superstition, religion, and medicine have made their long journey together, and even now are unable to let go of one another's hands.”

Sherwin B. Nuland (1930–2014) American surgeon

[The mysteries within: a surgeon explores myth, medicine, and the human body, Simon & Schuster, 2001, 18, https://books.google.com/books?id=uSBaTVMTYvIC&pg=18]
The Mysteries Within (2000)

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein photo
Claude Adrien Helvétius photo
Nicholas Wade photo