Quotes about human (10000 quotes, page 54)

“In a perfect literature all books should be only a single book, and in such an eternally developing book, the gospel of humanity and culture will be revealed.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Auf eine ähnliche Weise sollen in der vollkommnen Litteratur alle Bücher nur Ein Buch seyn, und in einem solchen ewig werdenden Buche wird das Evangelium der Menschheit und der Bildung offenbart werden.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 95

Books , Literature , Perfection

“In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Reported in Proceedings in honor of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and distinguished alumni at the meeting of the Council, Harvard Law School Association in Cambridge, April 30, 1960.
Other writings

Disappointment

“There is always war,” said Dakkar, coldly. “There will always be war, whilst empires oppress and distort human potential.”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 24, “Dakkar” (p. 229)

War

“Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Naked Manager (1972), p. 12

Way , Home , Business , Cooking

“Genetics is the study of similarity between relatives, and the problem of human genetics is that, in a species with a family and social structure and a taboo against manipulating individual life histories experimentally, there is a confounding between the similarity of relatives that arises from biological causes and the similarity that arise from social causes.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

Genes and Sexuality: An Exchange (1995)

Life , Family , History , Problem

“We believe that we live in the 'age of information,' that there has been an information 'explosion,' an information 'revolution.' While in a certain narrow sense that is the case, in many more important ways just the opposite is true. We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach. An unenlightenment. An age of missing information.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Source: The Age of Missing Information (1992), p. 9

Age , Way , Knowledge , Sense

“It is the grandeur of Christ's character which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles or teachings apart from. His character. The greatest truth of the gospel is Christ Himself — a human body become the organ of the Divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 60.

Life , God , Truth , Nature

“When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places. So, even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald du Maurier said here not long ago, perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest…Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people. The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare's country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare's fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the City of London School (13 June 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 120.
1924

Men , People , World , Fools

“the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty enacted in by the Knesset in 1992, to anchor in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state two strands – the Jewish heritage and the democratic tradition… and it is the task of the courts to interweave them into the synthesis indicated by the Basic Law”

Menachem Elon (1923–2013) Israeli High Court judge

see: Menachem Elon, English translation of Jewish Law : History, Sources, Principles / Jewish Publication Society, 1994

Law

“Critique in its many manifestations puts up a common opposition to instrumental rationality, because such a rationality can be linked to control in the human condition in a similar way to the idea of power in the control of the natural world.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Robert L. Flood (1990) Liberating Systems Theory p. 204; as cited in: Trudi Cooper (2003) Critical Management, Critical Systems Theory And System Dynamics http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2003/proceedings/orsystems/Cooper.pdf.

World , Way , Idea , Nature

“All international investment agreements under negotiation should include a clear provision stipulating that in case of conflict between the human rights obligations of a State and those under other treaties, human rights conventions prevail”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the adverse impacts of free trade and investment agreements on a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly

“The evaluation of one's own social circumstance is part of the analysis of facts and events, and this kind of evaluation is, I feel, as good a starting point of the inquiry into the relations between philosophy and society as any other. Philosophy, in understanding human society, call for an analysis of facts and events, and an attempt to see how they fit into human life, and so how they make up human experience. In this way, philosophy, like history, can come to enrich, indeed to define, the experience of man.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Introduction, p. 2.

Life , Way , Feeling , History

“Her face kept changing and that bothered me as well. Why were human beings so unstable? The door and the curtains and the supply cabinet didn't continually change their appearance.”

John Twelve Hawks book Spark

Spark (2014)

Appearance , Change

“When I draw, 1 am as pre-occupied before a gas-jet as before a human being.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

Lane, The Paintings of Albert Marquet p. 188; as quoted in 'Appendix' of Albert Marquet and the Fauve movement, 1898-1908, Norris Judd, published 1976, - translation Norris Judd - Thesis (A.B.)--Sweet Briar College, p. 116

Drawing

“Even if they had been real gods, what did it matter? What was it to me? Here I was still, right where I was born a thousand or so years before, in the middle of the human condition—namely, rubbish and pain. If the gods were real, their only relationship with us was to use us to play their games. Screw them all.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 174)

God , Pain , Game

“Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 103

Life

“To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 30
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Animals

“Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further, it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objectives of tektology are basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all other sciences, and of all human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method: that is, it is interested only in the mode of organization of this subject matter.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Variant: Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter.
Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. iii

Law , Nature , Universe , Science

“Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

Seventy Years Among Savages (1921).

Religion , Soul , Imagination

“Cradle of Letters! Mistress of the World!
Soil of the Sun! Italia! I salute thee!
How oft the human race have worn thy yoke.
The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

World , Art , Sun

“Flaming torches arching from hand to hand, the silken rolling of flesh on flesh, tautened wire vibrating to the human word, ideogrammatic gestures of fear, love, and rage, the mathematical grace of bodies moving through space—all seemed revealed as shadows on the void, the pauvre panoply of man’s attempt to transcend the universe of space and time through the transmaterial purity of abstract form.
Yet beyond this noble dance of human art, the highest expression of our spirit’s striving to transcend the realm of time and form, lay that which could not be encompassed by the artifice of man. From nothing are we born, to nothing do we go; the universe we know is but the void looped back upon itself, and form is but illusion’s final veil.
We touch that which lies beyond only in those fleeting rare moments when the reality of form dissolves—through molecule and charge, the perfection of the meditative trance, orgasmic ego-loss, transcendent peaks of art, mayhap the instant of our death.
Vraiment, is not the history of man from pigments smeared on the walls of caves to our present starflung age, our sciences and arts, our religions and our philosophies, our cultures and our noble dreams, our heroics and our darkest deeds, but the dance of spirit round this central void, the striving to transcend, and the deadly fear of same?”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (p. 117)

Love , Death , Age , Fear

“The precursors to a civilization that’s going under are the same, time and time again. … What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

25 September 2006 article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15001985/

Guy , Time

“Is there not therefore rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels us to believe in God. And to believe in God — I must reiterate it yet again — is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hunger for divinity, to be sensible to his lack and absence, to wish that God may exist. And it is the wish to save the human finality of the Universe. For one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, if it be that our consciousness is based upon Consciousness, if consciousness is the end of the Universe.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

Hunger , God , Feeling , Universe

“If Darwin's discovery had been made in a Taoist or Shinto, Hindu or animist culture it would very likely have become just one more strand in its intertwining mythologies. In these faiths humans and other animals are kin. By contrast, arising among Christians who set humans beyond all other living things, it triggered a bitter controversy that rages on to this day.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Science versus Humanism (p. 3-4)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Faith , Rage , Animals

“In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess — we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)

Star , Tree , Animals

“At the foot of the cross, in all humility and in all adoration, we have learned at once the depth and the height of human nature; we have learned to think all wisdom but foolishness for the knowledge of Christ; all purity but sin, unwashed by His atonement; all hope in earth, of all hopes the most miserable, but in the faith of His most blessed resurrection; content to bear the struggles of life, at His command; and submitting to the grave, with a consciousness that it can sting no more.”

George Croly (1780–1860) Irish poet, novelist, historian, and divine

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 172.

Life , Wisdom , Faith , Hope

“Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Money , World , Way , Parting

“Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots, to the wall, to the object, to the living being, to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression, the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses, and an experience which viewers can share.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 140 (1985)

Art , Painting

“If then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendor of the stars can be cast into darkness?”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IX, Chapter I, Sec. 12

Star , Thinking

“Only by presupposing God's prior and inconceivable forgiveness can the limitations of human good will be transcended, and only thus can the danger of human pride be avoided.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Love Alone Is Credible (1963)

God , Forgiveness

“Let me first say that there are ongoing legal proceedings, so I am limited in my ability to speak about those issues. But I’m fully aware that there is a tendency in all of us, as a society, to romanticize people and their families, especially when their work is bigger than themselves. At the risk of sounding cliché, you can’t have rainbows without rain, or roses without thorns. It’s unrealistic for people to have great expectations of us and not allow for basic human normalcy. Our conflicts are reflective of our humanity. We are a family like all others and subject to the same struggles and unfortunate consequences with which all God’s people contend.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Statements during interview with The Root (24 June 2014) http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/06/the_root_interviews_bernice_a_king.html

God , People , Family

“Depend upon it, my younger brethren, the bright, self-sacrificing enthusiasms of early manhood are among the most precious things in the whole course of human life.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 209.

Life , Dependency

“An extreme, unconditional human yearning was expressed for the first time by Nietzsche independently of moral goals or of serving God. … Ardor that doesn’t address a dramatically articulated moral obligation is a paradox. … If we stop looking at states of ardor as simply preliminary to other and subsequent conditions grasped as beneficial, the state I propose seems a pure play of lightning, merely an empty consummation. Lacking any relation to material benefits such as power or the growth of the state (or of God or a Church or a party), this consuming can’t even be comprehended. … I’ll have to face the same difficulties as Nietzsche—putting God and the good behind him, though all ablaze with the ardor possessed by those who lay down their lives for God or the good. … I’ll admit that moral investigations that aim to surpass the good lead first of all to disorder.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), pp. xx-xxii

God , Time

“This paper analyzes the relations between knowledge, control and organizational structure both in the market system as a whole and in private organizations. Limitations on the mental capacity of the human mind and the costs of producing and transferring knowledge means that knowledge relevant to all decisions can never be collected in the mind of a single individual or a small body of experts. This means that if the knowledge valuable to a particular decision is to be used in making that decision, there must be a system for partitioning out decision rights to individuals who already have the relevant knowledge and abilities or who can acquire or produce them at the lowest cost. Self interest on the part of individual decision-makers means a control system is required to motivate individuals with the decision rights and the relevant knowledge to use those decision rights appropriately. This control problem is solved in a capitalist economy by a system of alienable property rights.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling. "Specific and general knowledge and organizational structure." (1992).

Motivation , Knowledge , Problem , Decision

“As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Afterword to Nooncoming, p. 104
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Love , War , People , Faith

“That Somerset Maugham anthology Cakes and Ale. How destructive he is, venomous, pulling everything down in biting, corrosive cynicism. Yet somewhere deep down under all the conceit, sarcasm and snobbery is real quivering pain, helpless bewilderment at the inexplicable fact that human nature is chequered. And what perplexes him is less the common, mean element in decent people than the goodness and kindness of wicked, vicious ones.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Pain , People , Nature

“Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Religion , Exercises , Study , Science

“People who get to the top of any organisation are generally dysfunctional human beings who are overachieving, overcompensating or overbearing.”

Guy Browning (1964) British comedian

The board, Office Politics (2006).

People

“We’re at a moment of historic opportunity, especially when it comes to taking down America’s largest abortion provider. For a century, Planned Parenthood has relentlessly marched forward with its message of eugenics and abortion, taking the lives of millions of unborn children and denying women the truth. They have intimidated political leaders and destroyed the careers of good men and women in office. Now, for the first time since our tax dollars were turned over to them a half century ago, we have the chance to convert federal funding to alternatives that honor community values and respect human life. We must seize this opportunity.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser President of the Susan B. Anthony List

Marjorie Dannenfelser on ‘A Moment of Historic Opportunity’ http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/a-moment-of-historic-opportunity (January 19, 2017)

Life , Women , Men , Children

“For the continuing worldwide oppression of class, nation and race, the incalculable waste and untold misery, the unending destruction and preparation for destruction and the permanent threat to democratic order that characterize the rule of capitalism in this, its most technically advanced, most "enlightened" and most materially wealthy era now threaten human survival itself. In the age of atomic weapons and intercontinental missiles, the predatory system of imperialist rivalry and global exploitation, of military intervention and counterrevolutionary war, faces mankind with the prospect of the ultimate barbarism.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

from the 1969 book Empire and Revolution.
1960s

War , Age

“Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 166

School , Freedom

“I think the history of humanity is the history of our co-evolution with devices and artifacts that make our lives easier. And I think it's now a question from moral philosophy — not for science — to decide how we use them and what it would mean to be enslaved by them, whether we do so willingly or reluctantly and genuinely.”

David Krakauer (1967) scientist

App Intelligence, NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, November 27, 2015 https://www.ttbook.org/interview/app-intelligence

History , Question , Thinking , Science

“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.” She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Life , People , Truth , Way

“All the great people and great things in life are failures. It is in doing what we cannot do but must try to do that humans rise to their exalted fulfillment. Maglie had tried to do with an old man’s arm and back what a young man might not have been able to do as well. Of such failures is greatness made.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Sal Maglie's departure from Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, from A Day in the Bleachers https://books.google.com/books?id=iJqHg1sitk0C&pg=PA114 (1955) by Hano, p. 114
Other Topics

Life , People , Failure

“The enormity of the universe revealed by science cannot readily be grasped by the human brain, but the music of The Planets enables the mind to acquire some comprehension of the vastness of space where rational understanding fails.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Quoted in Michael Short, Gustav Holst 1874-1934: A Centenary Documentation

Music , Understanding , Universe , Science

“Please give a detailed account as to how I can best serve humanity”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice
On Vocational Choices
Context: In those ways that open to you day by day. It isn't always the individual that plans to accomplish some great deed that does the most. It is the one who meets the opportunities and privileges which are accorded it day by day. As such opportunities are used, there are better ways opened. For what we use in the way of helpfulness to others, increases in itself. Begin with what you are!

“We treat the children like children. It is the powerful with their war that treats them like they are adults. We talk to them. We teach them that the word, together with love and dignity, is what makes us human beings. We don't teach them how to fight. Well, yes, but only how to fight with their words. They learn. They know that the reason we are in all this is so that they won't have to do the same. And they talk and they also listen. Contrary to what you say, we teach the children that words don't kill but that yes it is possible to kill words and, along with them, the act of being human.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

"I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet" http://www.csuchico.edu/zapatist/HTML/Archive/Communiques/etaJAN.html January, 2003

Love , War , Children , Learning

“Humanism does not exist in itself, just as man taken in himself and for himself does not exist. Only concrete man exists, man set in a particular age, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular social class, representing a particular tradition and particular personal ideals.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Adam Schaff (1947), cited in: Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio (2007) "Adam Schaff: from Semantics to Political Semiotics." 9th World Congress of IASS/AIS. 2007.

Age , Personality , Country

“The human mind is utterly stupid when it carries, quite willingly, the heavy burden of resentment.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#16,575, Part 17
Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998)

Stupidity

“Policies should take account of the emotional dimensions of human behaviour rather than assuming rational action.”

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

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.203

“Philosophers have been especially concerned with the problem of consciousness—for example, how to explain the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. This is a very thorny issue. The problem springs from the fact that the redness of red that I perceive so vividly cannot be precisely communicated to another human being, at least in the ordinary course of events. If you cannot describe the properties of a thing unambiguously, you are likely to have some difficulty trying to explain these properties in reductionist terms.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

Pain , Spring , Communication , Problem

“The state of affairs in other Countries, which claim to be more highly advanced and progressive, is much worse. There it is stated that no man or woman approaches Marriage as a virgin. This is the direct result of provocative publicity. The case of the male is perhaps worse, for he boasts he cannot even recollect the number or wild oats he has sown and which is considered as a Passport to manhood (sic). Others again have disgraced their humanity in disgusting unnatural offences, which they are now trying to make their Governments legalise, and finally others again are subject to the Oedipus complex.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Promiscuity & Continence

Marriage , Country

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)

World , Faith , Law , History

“I'm afraid I do believe that all earthly love can die - since man is mortal, why not also his most human feature? - and for me pretensions such as love that dies was never love, etc. belong to schoolgirls' albums.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Love

“Anybody who sends human aid, please make sure that it reaches hungry and homeless people not to people who will rent BMW M3”

Bassel Khartabil (1981–2015) free culture and democracy activist, Syrian political prisoner

Tweet January 31, 2012 2:52PM https://twitter.com/basselsafadi/status/164360388656369665 at Twitter.com

People

“But if we run away, we are still going to be there. Sooner or later, we’ll have the same problem all over again; runaway intelligence augmentation, self-expression, engineered intelligences, whatever. Possibly that’s what happened out past the Böotes void—not a galactic-scale civilization, but a race of pathological cowards fleeing their own exponential transcendence. We carry the seeds of a singularity with us wherever we go, and if we try to excise those seeds, we cease to be human, don’t we?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 8 (“Elector”), p. 356

Intelligence , Problem , Past

“Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

BBC Newsnight Special: Christopher Hitchens, 29 November 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mynVHOUXeDE&NR=1
2010s, 2010

Religion

“If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Telegraph article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10052646/Quitting-the-EU-wont-solve-our-problems-says-Boris-Johnson.html (12 May 2013)
Peking university, Beijing (14 October 2013) Joint speech to students http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/14/boris-johnson-charm-offensive-china
2010s, 2013

Problem

“Mr. President and I also had direct and open exchange of views on a matter that we may differ, especially on matters related to religion and human rights. And our approach is that we would increase our dialogue in order to have a better understanding of each other. And we are also determined not to let those differences afflict our overall, larger interest.”

Nguyen Minh Triet (1942) President of Vietnam

President Bush Welcomes President Nguyen Minh Triet of Vietnam to the White House http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/06/20070622-2.html# June 2007

Religion , Understanding , Affliction

“In spite of mistakes, faulty diagnosis and much error, humanity cannot do without its doctors, its surgeons, and its hospitals. They are urgently needed, and will be for centuries to come…”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Esoteric Healing (1953), p. 481

Error

“Here in Europe we're very big on human rights, unless somebody claims the fundamental human right of free expression, and then we have a problem. Recently a Swedish politician was convicted of hate speech for correctly connecting mass Islamic immigration with the high level of rape in Sweden. … Mass Islamic immigration has turned Sweden from one of the world's safest countries for women into the rape capital of Europe. … Everybody in Sweden knows this is happening, but they pretend it isn't because they're so terrified of being called "Islamophobes" and racists, and with good reason. We've seen what happens to people in Sweden who won't embrace the official multiculti lie. They can expect to have their identities hacked, and to be publicly fingered for reprisals, which could mean being socially ostracised, losing their job, or being physically attacked by far-left thugs who feel entitled not only to smash the opinions of those they disagree with but to smash their skulls for holding those opinions, all in the name of tolerance, of course.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden Goes Insane" (19 May 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_znVnOizU8
2014

Women , Hate , People , Lie

“Bit by bit, as the legend unfolds, the reader gets a more accurate picture of the human race. By degrees, one gains the conviction that here is a race which can be little more than pure fantasy. It is not the kind of race which could rise from humble beginnings to the eminence of culture with which it is gifted in these tales. Its equipment is too poor.
So far it lack of stability has become apparent. Its preoccupation with a mechanical civilization rather than with a culture based on some of the sounder, more worthwhile concepts of life indicates a lack of basic character.
And now, in this tale, we learn of the limited communications which it possessed, a situation which certainly is not conducive to advancement. Man’s inability to understand and appreciate the thought and the viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Notes on the Fifth Tale (p. 119)
City (1952)

Life , Communication , Understanding , Learning

“We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating … second, that however bizarre and arcane our world might be, nature remains potentially comprehensible to the human mind.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"A Special Fondness for Beetles", pp. 386-387
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

World , Nature

“I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom... [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

As quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii
1940s–present

Men , Thinking , Freedom

“Deep in the human nature there is an almost irresistible tendency to concentrate physical and mental energy on attempts at solving problems that seem to be unsolvable.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Source: 1970s and later, From Utopian Theory to Practical Applications, 1970, p. 10

Nature , Problem

“The hostility of society toward homosexuality is only a special case of its general hostility toward the adolescent spirit. In order to undermine the creative efforts of individuals to shape their lives by their own standards of human understanding and morality, society identifies their deviancy in terms of its inadequacies and failures, thereby undermining their access to basic social acceptance in adaptive areas.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process (1971)

Hostility , Failure , Understanding , Effort

“So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above. All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms. A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior. The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing. They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination. A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions. Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything. “Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul. No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter. The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community. How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison? The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction. The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity. Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis. Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts… Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities… Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole. They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them). To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Beyond terrorism: ISIS and other enemies of humanity" http://nypost.com/2014/08/20/beyond-terrorism-isis-and-other-enemies-of-humanity/, New York Post (August 20, 2014).
New York Post

Hostility , War , People , Fear

“The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 581

Age , Idea , Time

“A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All of these events are distant in time and space, if they're all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, and influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of rainstorm by contemplating the whole not any part of the pattern.
Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 7 as cited in: Vivien Martin (2003) Leading Change in Health and Social Care. p. 37

Understanding , Business , Problem , Distant

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , People , World , Fear

“Or he may study the hidden mind of the animal. A mixture of feelings and of thoughts, of dumb intelligences and of rudimentary affections, he reads the whole humble moral life of the beast in its eyes and in its movements.
He is even the confidant of nature. The trees, the plants talk to him like friends. The old gnarled oaks speak to him of their kindliness for the human race whom they protect beneath their sheltering branches. The flowers commune with him by the gracious swaying of their stalks, by the singing tones of their petals — each blossom amidst the grass is a friendly word addressed to him by nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. II. To the artist, all in nature is beautiful, p. 48

Life , Feeling , Confidence , Intelligence

“Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires.”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

Tea

“The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought about that because I take the old-fashioned approach of equating tradition with value (which may be a failing). But whatever the case, positive tradition can also provoke opposition if it's too powerful, too overwhelming, too demanding. That would basically be about the human side of wanting to hold your own.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote of Richter from an interview with Jeanne Anne Nugent, 2006; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
after 2000

Fashion

“Many and opposite are the lots in life, and unequal are the portions which they measure out to the children of earth. We cannot agree with those who contend that the difference after all is but in outward seeming. Such an assertion is often the result of thoughtlessness — sometimes the result of selfishness. It is one of the good points of human nature, that it revolts against human suffering. Few there are who can witness pain, whether of mind or of body, without pity, and the desire to alleviate; but such is our infirmity of purpose, that a little suffices to turn us aside from assistance. Indolence, difficulties, and contrary interests come in the way of sympathy, and then we desire to excuse our apathy to ourselves. It is a comfortable doctrine to suppose that the evil is made up by some mysterious allotment of good; it is an excuse for non-interference, and we let conscience sleep over our own enjoyments, taking it for granted others have them also — though how we know not.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

Life , Pain , Children , Way

“Those who kill “humanely” often contend that their victims suffer minimally or not at all. This contention helps ease their guilt and makes the continuation of the killing more acceptable.”

Charles Patterson (author) (1935) American author and historian

Source: Eternal Treblinka (2002), p. 133

Suffering , Help

“It is a curious accident of history that the Christian religion became heavily involved with theology. No other religion finds it necessary to formulate elaborately precise statements about the abstract qualities and relationships of gods and humans. … The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

God , Religion , History , Idea

“The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom — the freedom we prize — is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (November 2003)

Exercises , History , Nature , Freedom

“There is a saying among those of us who have careers with the Council of Humanity that skiers, cooks, painters, and diplomats must work with what is in front of them.”

John Barnes book Earth Made of Glass

Earth Made of Glass (1998)

Cooking

“The inequities in human relationships are many, but the lot of the Negro is one of the worst. Here in the south this fact is tragically evident. The poor colored people are kicked from pillar to post, condemned, cussed, ridiculed, accorded no respect, permitted no sense of human dignity. What can be done I don't know. Nearly everyone, particularly the southerners, seem to think the only problem involved is seeing to it that they keep their place, whatever that may be. We supposedly are fighting this war to obliterate the malignant idea of racial supremacy and master-slave relationships. When this war is over the colored problem is apt to be more difficult than ever. May wisdom, justice, brotherly love guide our steps to the right solution.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Journal entry (March 12, 1942)

Love , Wisdom , War , People

“Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner

Problem , Parting

“Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located — so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation — there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 8 “Seldon’s Plan”; in part II, “Search by the Foundation” originally published as “—And Now You Don’t” in Astounding (November and December 1949 and January 1950)

Fear , Understanding

“No government, at that time, appeared in the world, nor is perhaps to be found in the records of any history, which subsisted without the mixture of some arbitrary authority, committed to some magistrate; and it might reasonably, beforehand, appear doubtful, whether human society could ever arrive at that state of perfection, as to support itself with no other control, than the general and rigid maxims of law and equity. But the parliament justly thought, that the King was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. And in the event it has been found, that, though some inconveniencies arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet the advantages so much overbalance them, as should render the English forever grateful to the memory of their ancestors, who, after repeated contests, at last established that noble principle.”

David Hume The History of England

Volume V, Chapter LIV (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), pp. 329-30; referring to the abolition of the Star Chamber
The History of England (1754-62)

World , Law , History , Support

“One observed a number of discordant features – a feminine sensibility, a delight in the absurd, a taste for exaggeration and melodrama, a very mature judgement and then some lack of human substance, some hereditary thinness in the blood that at times gave people who met him an odd feeling in the spine. He seemed almost indecently lacking in ordinariness.”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

Gerald Brenan "Bloomsbury in Spain and England", in S. P. Rosenbaum (ed.) The Bloomsbury Group (1995) p. 347.
Criticism

People , Feeling , Time

“There are immutable Islamic principles which order relations between people, but there is no Islamic economic, social or political structure which cannot be changed… Nothing which can make the world a better place can be rejected out of hand as non-Islamic… In order to be Islamic, a solution must fulfill two conditions: it must be maximally efficient and maximally humane.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Source: The Islamic Declaration (1970), p. 31.

People , World , Change

“I didn't use the music from the scene in which Godzilla dies in GODZILLA - KING OF THE MONSTERS for the one in which he does actually meltdown because Godzilla was not what I was trying to focus on this time. Instead, I tried to focus on the dark side of humanity, which lead to the creation of atomic weapons, and Godzilla.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Music , Time

“In the struggle for human rights and justice, Negros will make a mistake if they become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Speech delivered in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College (7 February 1957), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise (The Chronicle-Telegram; January 21, 2008) http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2008/01/21/when-mlk-came-to-oberlin/
1950s

Hate , Justice

“In the slow accretion of self-images that is the mortar between periods in the history of our civilization, a third character ideal emerged, in part from the failure of the previous two [political man and religious man]: economic man, one who would cultivate rationally his very own garden, meanwhile solacing himself with the assumption that by thus attending to his own lower needs a general satisfaction of the higher needs would occur. A moral revolution was the result: what had been lower in the established hierarchy of human interests was asserted to be higher.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

"Reflections on Psychological Man in America," The Feeling Intellect (1990), p. 4

History , Failure , Parting