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5a522e8 But, Henry, this is wicked!' But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. 'The weak are meat, the strong do eat. humanity life David Mitchell
d291bfe There is only one sin, only one, and that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right of a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie you steal someone's right to truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no more wretched act than stealing. A man who takes what is not his to take, be it life or a loaf of naan, I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him. humanity soulful Khaled Hosseini
490cdf1 But whereas we, in our conception, represented the will of nature to renew itself, to individualize and march forward, the others lived in the desire for the perpetuation of things as they are. For them humanity--which they loved as we did--was something complete that must be maintained and protected. For us humanity was a distant goal towards which we were marching, whose image no one yet know, whose laws were nowhere written down. humanity will-of-nature Hermann Hesse
3a6cc97 It was his job to expect the worst of humanity, including myself. humanity worst James S.A. Corey
2580e8a It was the security man's nightmare scenario. In the face of death, why wouldn't there be riots? Why wouldn't there be killing and theft and rape? If there were no consequences - or if all the consequences were the same - then anything became possible. It was his job to expect the worst of humanity, including himself. humanity social-psychology James S.A. Corey
ea13bd0 The priest's work, the priest's service, was understood as an act of worship. This was God's desire at Sinai - that everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving each other. jesus humanity life inspirational serving-god serving-others Rob Bell
bca3ba5 Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you're enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today- and promise population control tomorrow. humanity population-control Daniel Quinn
2ff55b9 "Marian's eyes absolutely blaze. To meet them is to have a shock of contact as if they were electrically charged. "Now you see? You wondered what was in whale's milk. Don't you know now? The same thing that's in a mushroom spore so small you need a microscope to see it, or in gophers, or poison oak, or anything else we try to pave under or grub out, or poison. There isn't good life and bad life, there's only life. Think of the force down there, just telling things to get born!" nature humanity life biology birth Wallace Stegner
3a4f16c The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can't look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can't find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. nature humanity life good-vs-evil Wallace Stegner
66db9de An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. earth humanity flight Barry Lopez
bdedd92 If our ethical code makes a purely arbitrary distinction between humans and all other species, then we have a code based on naked selfishness devoid of any higher principle. evolution humanity science animal-welfare biology research morals Jared Diamond
ab880a0 There is often something beautiful, there is always something awful, in the spectacle of a a person who has lost one of his faculties, a faculty he never questioned until it was gone, and who struggles to recover it. Yet people remain people, on crutches or indeed on deathbeds.... humanity disabled James Baldwin
0d35c60 john was smart, but he was also a young male with a usually empty belly. sometimes it was simple as that humanity life the-finisher human-society David Baldacci
4ba6437 The depression we find ourselves in here, and which is causing havoc in America, is allowing people to give weight to that which divides them, rather than to the shared experiences and elements of connection they see mirrored in their fellow man. unity humanity Jacqueline Winspear
fa10d28 io, mio caro, non credo nell'amore universale. L'amore esiste in dosi modiche. Si possono amare forse cinque fra uomini e donne, dieci magari, talvolta financo quindici. E anche questo solo assai di rado. Ma se uno arriva e mi dice che ama tutto il Terzo mondo, o ama l'America Latina, o ama il sesso femminile, quello non e amore ma retorica. Pura demagogia. Slogan. Non siamo nati per amare piu di una manciata di persone. love-quotes philosophical humanity philosophy society love-hurts jews jewish human-nature Amos Oz
70f9aaa "Isn't it complicated to be human, though?" she said. "Animals seem to give up their lives so naturally...And after all, I grew up, I married John, I had Debby. So knowing, being able to understand and forecast and even predict an approximate date, shouldn't make any difference. I guess consciousness makes individuals of us, and as individuals we lose the old acceptance..." "The one thing," Marian said in a voice that went suddenly small and tight, "the thing I can hardly bear sometimes is that I won't ever see her grow up. She'll have to do it without whatever I could have given her." "Time, too, time and everything that one could do in it, and the chance of wasting or losing or never even realizing it. It's so important to us because we see it so close. We're individuals, we're full of ourselves, and so we're bad historians. We get crazy and anxious because all of sudden there's so little time left to be loving and generous as we wish we'd always been and always intended to be...do you suppose I feel the shortness of time because I want to experience everything and feel everything that the race has ever felt? Because there's so much to feel and I'm greedy?" grief loss suffering humanity death love Wallace Stegner
25d43ce It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things! racism equality slavery freedom empathy compassion humanity politics religion Harriet Beecher Stowe
24b8364 "A Yale professor of military history, Micheal Howard, writing in the New York Times )January 28, 1991) quoted the military strategist Clausewitz approvingly: "The fact that a bloody slaughter is a horrifying act must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity." war humanity Howard Zinn
233a9e8 Old age had distilled her down to her essence. humanity life-lessons life wisdom essence elderly old-people womanhood old-age J. Courtney Sullivan
59b4651 And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. humanity Ray Bradbury
165ce4e We have power as consumers. We can exercise that power all the time by not choosing to invest time, energy or funds to support the production of mass media images that do not reflect life-enhancing values, that undermine a love ethic. humanity change optimism love consummerism generosity society principles values bell hooks
6354e7d we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be. humanity love failings Alexander McCall Smith
0c77514 "Every person's life is of importance to himself, of course: ... But in the universe of infinite space and time, it is insignificant. ... Perhaps Carl Becker, the historian, and one of the most civilized men I ever knew, grasped best our piddling place in the infinite. Man [he wrote] is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him. Unparented, unassisted and undirected by omniscient or benevolent authority, he must fend for himself, and with the aid of his own limited intelligence find his way about in an indifferent universe. And in a rather savage world! The longer I lived and the more I observed, the clearer it became to me that man had progressed very little beyond his earlier savage state. After twenty million years or so of human life on this Earth, the lot of most men and women is, as Hobbes said, "nasty, brutish, and short." Civilization is a thin veneer. It is so easily and continually eroded or cracked, leaving human beings exposed for what they are: savages. What good three thousand years of so-called civilization, of religion, philosophy, and education, when ... men go on torturing, killing and repressing their fellowmen?" humanity life William L. Shirer
415b4ec It was not until 2014, more than two decades after the mastodon's discovery [a mastodon scavenged by humans in the Americas], that the tide decisively turned. Built on improved understanding of processes that incorporate natural uranium and its decay products in fossil bone, a newly enhanced technique, known as 230 Th/U radiometric dating, was now available that could settle the age of the Cerutti deposit once and for all. Demere therefore sent several of the mastodon bones to the US Geological Survey in Colorado, where geologist Jim Paces, using the updated and refined technique, established beyond reasonable doubt that the bones were buried 130,000 years ago. humanity ice-age prehistory deep-human-history Graham Hancock
0d77e58 As a paleontologist, [...] I ask the question--why there humans here earlier? I mean, we have dispersal of Eurasian animal species into North America and dispersal of North American species into Eurasia at earlier times. So why humans have been here as well? [Quoting Tom Demere] humanity paleontology humans Graham Hancock
922cff1 The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that. enlightenment spirit humanity wonder beauty religion god life love wisdom on-being awe attention life-force mindfulness grace diversity mystery Krista Tippett
5097236 What humanity wants most is crude sensation. Really? I thought what humanity wanted most was dignity. humanity Christopher Fowler
fd0f908 The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world. humanity Alexander McCall Smith
0d5b461 "In human life and in the history of faith, I think, love has a quality of a bedrock reality we discover-- adventurers, travelers, each of us, only fitfully apprehending its potential. I take some solace in the fact that I'm not alone in this intuition that the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering notwithstanding, "at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love." That's how Desmond Tutu put it to me, with greater authority than mine from a life that has known extremes of human cruelty one to another." humanity faith love on-being enoughness art-of-living Krista Tippett
a50a101 I actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me. (...) On the other hand, you're a human -you should understand self obsession. irony humanity egocentrism self-obsession self-absorption Markus Zusak
8360982 As a species they were therefore probably doomed. And so the only real adaptive strategy, for the individual, was to do one's best to secure one's own position. And sometimes that meant a little strategic defection. humanity species Kim Stanley Robinson
103304a The dangers that we face are part of the process, now well underway, of the unification of the planet--in language, culture, science, and commerce. They are both driven by the identical technological advances--this critical and delicate time coincides with the widespread availability of nuclear weapons. At the present rate of change, it seems likely that in the period between now and 2061, the turning point for the human species will have been reached. If we survive until then, our passage to the next apparition of Halley's Comet should be comparatively easy. That perihelion passage will be in March 2134, when the comet will make an unusually close encounter with the Earth. It will come as close as 0.09AU or 14 million kilometers, less than half the distance of the 1910 encounter. It will then be brighter than the brightest star. If there are those to do the commemorating, the years 2061 and 2134 should be celebrated for the courage, intelligence, and common purpose of a species forced by urgent necessity to come to its senses. humanity science inspirationalal human-species comet survival Carl Sagan Ann Druyan
5410e78 ... murder wol out murder humanity inevitability Geoffrey Chaucer
8788301 Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange. humanity men-and-women Alexander McCall Smith
2a7e937 ...and when the tension receded there was calm, the calm that is called before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be. mortality humanity Mohsin Hamid
706545a Because in the end we forget everything, anyway. We're human; we're amnesia machines. humanity forgetting Douglas Coupland
0d0b856 "First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. mortality humanity death rhyming the-book-thief fact humans Markus Zusak
c6fc448 You see, Great Caesar. she said, this is the way in which mortals retain the power of the divine---in every earthly choice they make. 'But it's a paradox.' he said. 'Human beings are in control of everything and nothing at all.' 'Yes, she answered, her coy smile spreading joy across her lovely face. It is that simple. humanity human-condition Karen Essex
e936ed0 Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books. humanity meaning-of-books universal-experiences universal-human-condition Roxane Gay
89ba13a We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it. nature humanity profit John Fowles
912e88f A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations. humanity W.E.B. Du Bois
615ce4e I leaned out the window to feel the night's deep blue, the same dark air that surrounded him in Genoa or Paris or wherever he was. I would give a great deal to know what he was thinking right at this moment. If a person could know for certain what the other person was thinking or doing, then loneliness might cease to exist in the world. loneliness humanity Susan Vreeland
6bcb85e "The missing link between animals and the real human being is most likely ourselves". Konrad Lorenz "Nothing exists except atoms and space; everything else is opinion". Democritus of Abdera "The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity". Edward de Bono." earth humanity extra-terrestrials great-flood trans-generational-memory-gene noah-s-ark pyramid homo-sapiens darwinism John Cowie
0e9b3c5 We shape each other to be human. relationships humanity Ursula K. Le Guin
0be156f Inhuman, V says. But that's an easy word. We've been doing that sort of thing to each other all through history, back past the Pyramids. Humans are inhuman, whether it's by direct action or by acceptance of a horrible action as normal. humanity inhumanity Charles Frazier
81418d9 The cult of individual personalities is always, in my view, unjustified . . . It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. humanity cognitive-bias human-civilisation einstein Walter Isaacson
b9a4931 All things in the world are created for Man, yet all have two purposes. The waters run that we might drink of them, but they are also symbols of the futility of Man. They reflect our lives in rushing beauty, birthed in the purity of the mountains. As babes they babble and run, gushing and growing as they mature into strong young rivers. Then they widen and slow until at last they meander, like old men, to join with the sea. And like the soles of men in the Nethervoid, they mix and mingle until the sun lifts them again as raindrops to fall upon the mountains. humanity life water David Gemmell
5601fb4 However angry I was with him, however much I wanted to humiliate Terry, I suddenly saw such humanity in his eyes, and in the way he tried to smile - such innocence in the way he wanted to understand me, and such possibility of pain, along with the implicit assumption that he wouldn't be harmed - that I pulled away. humanity pity Hanif Kureishi
1a5d87a "I used to feel spiritually inferior because I had not experienced the more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit and could not point to any bona fide "miracles" in my life. Increasingly, though, I have come to see that what I value may differ greatly from what God values. Jesus, often reluctant to perform miracles, considered it progress when he departed earth and entrusted the mission to his flawed disciples. Like a proud parent, God seems to take more delight as a spectator of the bumbling achievements of stripling children than in any self-display of omnipotence. From God's perspective, if I may speculate, the great advance in human history may be what happened at Pentecost, which restored the direct correspondence of spirit to Spirit that had been lost in Eden. I want God to act in direct, impressive, irrefutable ways. God wants to "share power" with the likes of me, accomplishing his work through people, not despite them." humanity god-s-power miracles god-s-will Philip Yancey
a8bfbf9 Only the artistic will to transform the future into a space of unlimited art-elevating chances enables us to understand the core of the procreation rule: 'a creator shall you create [...] a self-propelling wheel, a first movement'. This rule contains no less than Nietzsche's theology after the death of God: there will continue to be a God and gods, but only humanity-immanent ones, and only to the extent that there are creators who follow on from what has been achieved in order to go higher, faster and further. humanity god artistry death-of-god immanence nietzsche thought-provoking creation Peter Sloterdijk
9219d1d Up to a decade or two ago, the system production-nature (man's productive-exploitative relationship with nature and its resources) was perceived as a constant, whereas everybody was busy imagining different forms of the social organization of production and commerce (Fascism or Communism as alternatives to liberal capitalism); today, as Fredric Jameson perspicaciously remarked, nobody seriously considers possible alternatives to capitalism any longer, whereas popular imagination is persecuted by the visions of the forthcoming 'breakdown of nature', of the stoppage of all life on earth - it seems easier to imagine the 'end of the world' than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the 'real' that will somehow survive even under conditions of a global ecological catastrophe. nature world humanity catastrophe ecological global liberal end exploitation Slavoj Žižek
9a7e30b Pitiful, puling, like all your kin the slave of time that rots the body before the mind has seen more than a single flower in all the meadows of the Cosmos. mortality humanity Barbara Hambly
c48ad88 Art is about the individual, the individual commitment not tethered to reward. For the maker, and later the reader or the viewer or the listener, there is no obvious reward. There is only the thing-in-itself, because you want it, because you're drawn to it. It speaks to the part of us that is fully human, the part that belongs only to ourselves, not mechanized, socialized, pacified, integrated, but voice-to-voice, across time, singing a song pitched to the human ear, singing of destiny, of fear, of loss, of hope, of renewal, of change, of connection, of all the subtle and fragile relationships between men and women, their children, their country, and all the things not measured or understood by the census figures and the gross national product. writing humanity Jeanette Winterson
e80cdb9 "The fullest account we have of Oannes is found in surviving fragments of the works of a Babylonian priest called Berossos who wrote in the third century BC. [...] Oannes did not do his work alone but was supposedly the leader of a group of beings known as the Seven Apkallu--the "Seven Sages"--who were said to have lived "before the flood" (a cataclysmic global deluge features prominently in many Mesopotamian traditions, including those of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon). Alongside Oannes, these sages are portrayed as bringers of civilization who, in the most ancient past, gave humanity a moral code, arts, crafts and agriculture and taught them architectural, building and engineering skills." humanity past archeology flood seven-sages cataclysm civilization Graham Hancock
6ff8bee el humano no es fruto de la perfeccion, sino de una enfermedad humanity reality historical-romance-fiction spain Manuel Rivas
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