humans

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
be9f98b	It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.	mankind reality humans	Rick Riordan
0c5362f	Humans see what they want to see.	mankind self-delusion willful-ignorance perception humans	Rick Riordan
8a6f806	Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.	humans	Dan Brown
3cd6dbc	I cannot compromise my respect for your love. You can keep your love, I will keep my respect.	respected respectful respecting respecting-yourself human inspiration inspirational-quotes motivation motivational love philosophy wisdom inspirational breaking-up respectable breakups breakup motivational-quotes respecting-others compromise wisdom-quotes respect self-respect humans	Amit Kalantri
9bc633e	People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.	people life humans	Emma Donoghue
4b3dd33	It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.	good humanity humans	Anthony Burgess
5b2185a	If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.	universe science life biology humans	Bill Bryson
88fc2f7	Only men would think of cutting themselves to determine who the packleader is. Idiots.	humans values	Christopher Paolini
2de87db	"You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?" "It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize."	humans	Christopher Moore
ae0a77a	Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.	be-yourself acting adage adages aphorisms audacity axiom axioms balls cojones conforming courageousness dictum dictums fit-in hardihood heroism herself human-being intrepidity made-me-think make-you-think maxims motivated moxie murder murdered oneself persons pluckiness pretender pretenders profound provoke-thought quotation spunk standout themselves true-grit daring humour bravery courage inspired people human fear quote inspiration inspire death motivational humor inspirational fearful actor saying lemons conform animal pluck courageous lemon plants nerve boldness motive plant words-to-live-by killed gnomes nonconformity orange maxim tree brave actors façades act grit epigram epigrams gnome produce deep fitting-in valour proverbs facade aphorism pretending quotations sayings pretend conformity gallantry peoples guts standing-out trees animals satire satirical self thought-provoking person himself yourself quotes human-beings thoughtful insightful proverb humans kill fearlessness dead fruit fruits die	Mokokoma Mokhonoana
27b8f3e	When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.	life humans	Tom Robbins
66676a7	Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.	wisdom thinking humans	Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
6779545	"Some night soon, I'll sneak back in here and we can eat chocolates until we vomit." "We're such refined, genteel ladies." "Please," Lysandra said, waving a manicured hand, "you and I are nothing but wild beasts wearing human skins. Don't even try to deny it."	manners humans ladies	Sarah J. Maas
56f72c6	Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.	vegetarianism ethics humans	Jonathan Safran Foer
9d9f74b	You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?	humour humans	Terry Pratchett
9da7da9	The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.	lesson humans	Holly Black
aa4d12d	It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.	murder theory humanity quote living life american-psycho psycho conclusion psychopath murderers gore serial-killer epiphany serial-killers the-world demons murderer society human-beings crime humans cruel human-nature horror evil	Bret Easton Ellis
51c3d3a	The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.	how-we-look mirrors show humans	John Green
1bdc5e5	I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be ? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.	myth christianity jesus religion marx moses einstein prophets freud christians muslims muhammad messiah theism atheism islam humans antisemitism jews	Christopher Hitchens
9db1bd6	Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.	life sensibility humans	Markus Zusak
46c06ce	Nothing ever happens in the world that does not happen first inside human hearts.	the-world humans	Fulton J. Sheen
834503a	I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.	time personality history life humans soul	James Baldwin
273a866	Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man.	function ornamentation human-body form humans	Ayn Rand
5da9f3d	Everyone needs help. That's the human condition.	humans	Max Allan Collins
dc8d582	It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.	madness humanity fear truth colonizer nuclear-threat nuclear-bomb whiteness folly white nuclear-weapons danger humans mind-control	Arundhati Roy
ff5d3f5	Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.	work kim-stanley-robison robots science-fiction humans	Kim Stanley Robinson
7398530	I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.	parable fable animals humans	Margaret Atwood
bd6786f	The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don't deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they're going to go home one night and have the girl they've loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con.	humans marks	Holly Black
06db27b	Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it's going	humans	Tom Robbins
87e1879	For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.	evolution man slavery humanity sacrifice great-ape great-apes apes belief preference superstition humans torture	Charles Darwin
ea22b24	Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.	evolution nature science natural-world extinction ecology humans	Mark Kurlansky
6105a09	Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.	the-coast-opposite-of-humanity unsaved extinction humans	John Gray
6145fb8	You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick.	humans	Anne Carson
3fb8969	We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.	self-identity self humans	Charles Taylor
3239f57	Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....	man existence humanism consistency essence atheistic views definition beliefs sartre jean-paul-sartre existentialism atheist humans	Jean-Paul Sartre
4835cb9	Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.	religion patterns gods humans	Adrian McKinty
2c0755e	You could also ask who's in charge. Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.	life host humans	Neil deGrasse Tyson
ad3bda3	While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.	kids reality life love truth ender humans	Orson Scott Card
9875758	Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.	humanity life ownership humans	Daniel Quinn
2337b90	Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better	love vulnerable humans	Ron Rash
4389103	Today we have made a fetish of choice; but a chosen death is forbidden. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learnt to cling more abjectly to life.	suicide life dying-animals straw-dogs humans	John Gray
6ef1d62	Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.	killing genius humans	Orson Scott Card
ce0b557	Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew. Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.	progress people speed souls humans	Margaret Atwood
7b15113	Anyone who truly wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will d better to seek out the company of other animals. A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.	the-unsaved the-end extinction humans	John Gray
c6d8b65	Wherever one encounters members of the human race, they always show the traits of a being that is condemned to surrealistic effort. Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats.	humanity humans	Peter Sloterdijk
973b358	If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itself.	man humanity life straw-dogs humans	John Gray
3094077	These humans--they are cruel monsters. Liars. Deceitful. For the first time, I want to hurt them the way they hurt me. This is so unfair. My body feels numb, my energy spent, my mind deceived and angry.	humans	Rachel Cohn
aebc233	The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.	life humans	Rachel Cohn
4bfc2b1	No, it's human, Curran said. That's the problem. People, especially unhappy people, want a cause. They want something to belong to, to be a part of something great and bigger, and to be led. It's easy to be a cog in a machine: you don't have to think, you have no responsibility. You're just following orders. Doing as your told.	hate humans	ilona Andrews
cb0e3f8	Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower's point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.	plants natural-selection humans	Michael Pollan
b1872a2	When Man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear. But not before.	humbleness humans	H.G. Wells
3c980fa	Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.	earth live nature way force method mold remake shatter style humankind break human-beings humans	Robin Hobb
7560eef	It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers.	people humans	Yann Martel
0e45d15	It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds their cities,live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until men want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we are now _ just ants.	war-of-the-worlds humans	H.G. Wells
c6b5196	The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to burn With love. How pitiful is our enforced return To those small things we are the masters of.	poetry death love mervyn-peake humans	Mervyn Peake
54935d0	"The male frog, in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - it's been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." "So?" "So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid." "Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists," said Jimmy. "They're not in it to get laid. They'd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men aren't frogs, they don't want women who are ten times bigger than them." "Female artists are biologically confused," said Crake." --	evolution humor biology attraction humans	Margaret Atwood
324d6ab	He willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else.	mankind humanity humans	J.R.R. Tolkien
83a635f	I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.	death dispair lefovers jigsaw-puzzle witnesses realization surprise humans survivors	Markus Zusak
0f59113	It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the earth is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive.	ecology humans	Orson Scott Card
94ed337	Man can't handle the chaos. Oh, you can understand it in the abstract, as long as you don't think about it too hard. But at the core of it, whenever humans come against chaos, they deal with it in one of three ways. ... Faced with chaos you will either ignore it, dance around it, or you will go mad.	humans	Ilona Andrews
75e623a	The news that is brought to us is nearly always bad news, but for every act of violence or destruction that occurs there are a million acts of peaceful friendliness.	violence humans	Desmond Morris
7162776	Like many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise.	humans noise	Barbara Kingsolver
e741375	Humans - a renewable resource.	humans vampires	Carrie Vaughn
832afac	I refuse to believe that gods want to make mortals unhappy and torment them. That's what humans do. And humans are very definitely not divine.	religion philosophy karen-traviss humans	Karen Traviss
9da2d31	As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a cell? Yet it's impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - perhaps even stronger. Life just wants to be.	existence history life desires impulse humans	Bill Bryson
8d6a4de	Well, anyhow, the practical outcome of all these damn democratic ideas, is that men of our quality -- yes, damn it! we have a quality -- excuse themselves from the hard and thankless service they owe -- not to the crowd, Dick, but to the race. (Much good it will do is to shirk like that in the long run.) We will not presume, we say, no. We shrug our shoulders and leave the geese, the hungry sheep, the born followers, call them what you will, to the leaders who haven't our scruples. The poor muts swallow those dead old religions no longer fit for human consumption, and we say 'let 'em.' They devour their silly newspapers. They let themselves be distracted from public affairs by games, by gambling, by shows and coronations and every soft of mass stupidity, while the stars in their courses plot against them. We say nothing. Nothing audible. We mustn't destroy the simple faith that is marching them to disaster. We mustn't question their decisions. That wouldn't be democratic. And then we sit here and say privately that the poor riff-raff are failing to adapt themselves to those terrible new conditions -- as if they had had half a chance of knowing how things stand with them. They are shoved about by patriotisms, by obsolete religious prejudices, by racial delusions, by incomprehensible economic forces. Amid a growth of frightful machinery...	humanity society humans	H.G. Wells
6942256	Man is now a new animal, a new and different animal; he can jump a hundred miles, see through brick walls, bombard atoms, analyse the stars, set about his business with the strength of a million horses. And so forth and so on. Yes. Yes. But all the same he goes on behaving like the weak little needy ape he used to be. He grabs, snarls, quarrels, fears, stampedes, and plays in his immense powder magazine until he seems likely to blow up the whole damned show.	mankind man humans	H.G. Wells
62acf07	This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people. \|\| A thousands years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids sand. One hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. the only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours.	nature future collective-action environment humans	Douglas Coupland
4005eb3	I've fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, 'My God is better than your God.' Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn't matter. Someone will tell you you're wrong, and he'll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we're just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.	war religion humans	David Baldacci
eb8c7fc	I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what couldI tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. None of those things, however, came out of my mouth. All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you. I am haunted by humans.	words humans stories	Markus Zusak
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
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

It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.

Rick Riordan

0c5362f

Humans see what they want to see.

mankind self-delusion willful-ignorance perception humans

Rick Riordan

8a6f806

Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.

humans

Dan Brown

3cd6dbc

I cannot compromise my respect for your love. You can keep your love, I will keep my respect.

respected respectful respecting respecting-yourself human inspiration inspirational-quotes motivation motivational love philosophy wisdom inspirational breaking-up respectable breakups breakup motivational-quotes respecting-others compromise wisdom-quotes respect self-respect humans

Amit Kalantri

9bc633e

People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.

people life humans

Emma Donoghue

4b3dd33

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.

good humanity humans

Anthony Burgess

5b2185a

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

universe science life biology humans

Bill Bryson

88fc2f7

Only men would think of cutting themselves to determine who the packleader is. Idiots.

humans values

Christopher Paolini

2de87db

"You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?" "It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize."

humans

Christopher Moore

ae0a77a

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

be-yourself acting adage adages aphorisms audacity axiom axioms balls cojones conforming courageousness dictum dictums fit-in hardihood heroism herself human-being intrepidity made-me-think make-you-think maxims motivated moxie murder murdered oneself persons pluckiness pretender pretenders profound provoke-thought quotation spunk standout themselves true-grit daring humour bravery courage inspired people human fear quote inspiration inspire death motivational humor inspirational fearful actor saying lemons conform animal pluck courageous lemon plants nerve boldness motive plant words-to-live-by killed gnomes nonconformity orange maxim tree brave actors façades act grit epigram epigrams gnome produce deep fitting-in valour proverbs facade aphorism pretending quotations sayings pretend conformity gallantry peoples guts standing-out trees animals satire satirical self thought-provoking person himself yourself quotes human-beings thoughtful insightful proverb humans kill fearlessness dead fruit fruits die

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

27b8f3e

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

life humans

Tom Robbins

66676a7

Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.

wisdom thinking humans

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

6779545

"Some night soon, I'll sneak back in here and we can eat chocolates until we vomit." "We're such refined, genteel ladies." "Please," Lysandra said, waving a manicured hand, "you and I are nothing but wild beasts wearing human skins. Don't even try to deny it."

manners humans ladies

Sarah J. Maas

56f72c6

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

vegetarianism ethics humans

Jonathan Safran Foer

9d9f74b

You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

humour humans

Terry Pratchett

9da7da9

The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.

lesson humans

Holly Black

aa4d12d

It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

murder theory humanity quote living life american-psycho psycho conclusion psychopath murderers gore serial-killer epiphany serial-killers the-world demons murderer society human-beings crime humans cruel human-nature horror evil

Bret Easton Ellis

51c3d3a

The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

how-we-look mirrors show humans

John Green

1bdc5e5

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be ? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.

myth christianity jesus religion marx moses einstein prophets freud christians muslims muhammad messiah theism atheism islam humans antisemitism jews

Christopher Hitchens

9db1bd6

Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

life sensibility humans

Markus Zusak

46c06ce

Nothing ever happens in the world that does not happen first inside human hearts.

the-world humans

Fulton J. Sheen

834503a

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.

time personality history life humans soul

James Baldwin

273a866

Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man.

function ornamentation human-body form humans

Ayn Rand

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Everyone needs help. That's the human condition.

humans

Max Allan Collins

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It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.

madness humanity fear truth colonizer nuclear-threat nuclear-bomb whiteness folly white nuclear-weapons danger humans mind-control

Arundhati Roy

ff5d3f5

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.

work kim-stanley-robison robots science-fiction humans

Kim Stanley Robinson

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I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.

parable fable animals humans

Margaret Atwood

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The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don't deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they're going to go home one night and have the girl they've loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con.

humans marks

Holly Black

06db27b

Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it's going

humans

Tom Robbins

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For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

evolution man slavery humanity sacrifice great-ape great-apes apes belief preference superstition humans torture

Charles Darwin

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Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

evolution nature science natural-world extinction ecology humans

Mark Kurlansky

6105a09

Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.

the-coast-opposite-of-humanity unsaved extinction humans

John   Gray

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You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick.

humans

Anne Carson

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We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.

self-identity self humans

Charles Taylor

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Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

man existence humanism consistency essence atheistic views definition beliefs sartre jean-paul-sartre existentialism atheist humans

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

religion patterns gods humans

Adrian McKinty

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You could also ask who's in charge. Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.

life host humans

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

kids reality life love truth ender humans

Orson Scott Card

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Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.

humanity life ownership humans

Daniel Quinn

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Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better

love vulnerable humans

Ron Rash

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Today we have made a fetish of choice; but a chosen death is forbidden. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learnt to cling more abjectly to life.

suicide life dying-animals straw-dogs humans

John   Gray

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Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.

killing genius humans

Orson Scott Card

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Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew. Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.

progress people speed souls humans

Margaret Atwood

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Anyone who truly wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will d better to seek out the company of other animals. A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.

the-unsaved the-end extinction humans

John   Gray

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Wherever one encounters members of the human race, they always show the traits of a being that is condemned to surrealistic effort. Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats.

humanity humans

Peter Sloterdijk

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If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itself.

man humanity life straw-dogs humans

John   Gray

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These humans--they are cruel monsters. Liars. Deceitful. For the first time, I want to hurt them the way they hurt me. This is so unfair. My body feels numb, my energy spent, my mind deceived and angry.

humans

Rachel Cohn

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The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.

life humans

Rachel Cohn

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No, it's human, Curran said. That's the problem. People, especially unhappy people, want a cause. They want something to belong to, to be a part of something great and bigger, and to be led. It's easy to be a cog in a machine: you don't have to think, you have no responsibility. You're just following orders. Doing as your told.

hate humans

ilona Andrews

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Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower's point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.

plants natural-selection humans

Michael Pollan

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When Man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear. But not before.

humbleness humans

H.G. Wells

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Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.

earth live nature way force method mold remake shatter style humankind break human-beings humans

Robin Hobb

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It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers.

people humans

Yann Martel

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It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds their cities,live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until men want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we are now _ just ants.

war-of-the-worlds humans

H.G. Wells

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The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to burn With love. How pitiful is our enforced return To those small things we are the masters of.

poetry death love mervyn-peake humans

Mervyn Peake

54935d0

"The male frog, in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - it's been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." "So?" "So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid." "Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists," said Jimmy. "They're not in it to get laid. They'd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men aren't frogs, they don't want women who are ten times bigger than them." "Female artists are biologically confused," said Crake." --

evolution humor biology attraction humans

Margaret Atwood

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He willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else.

mankind humanity humans

J.R.R. Tolkien

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I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.

death dispair lefovers jigsaw-puzzle witnesses realization surprise humans survivors

Markus Zusak

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It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the earth is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive.

ecology humans

Orson Scott Card

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Man can't handle the chaos. Oh, you can understand it in the abstract, as long as you don't think about it too hard. But at the core of it, whenever humans come against chaos, they deal with it in one of three ways. ... Faced with chaos you will either ignore it, dance around it, or you will go mad.

humans

Ilona Andrews

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The news that is brought to us is nearly always bad news, but for every act of violence or destruction that occurs there are a million acts of peaceful friendliness.

violence humans

Desmond Morris

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Like many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise.

humans noise

Barbara Kingsolver

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Humans - a renewable resource.

humans vampires

Carrie Vaughn

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I refuse to believe that gods want to make mortals unhappy and torment them. That's what humans do. And humans are very definitely not divine.

religion philosophy karen-traviss humans

Karen Traviss

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As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a cell? Yet it's impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - perhaps even stronger. Life just wants to be.

existence history life desires impulse humans

Bill Bryson

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Well, anyhow, the practical outcome of all these damn democratic ideas, is that men of our quality -- yes, damn it! we have a quality -- excuse themselves from the hard and thankless service they owe -- not to the crowd, Dick, but to the race. (Much good it will do is to shirk like that in the long run.) We will not presume, we say, no. We shrug our shoulders and leave the geese, the hungry sheep, the born followers, call them what you will, to the leaders who haven't our scruples. The poor muts swallow those dead old religions no longer fit for human consumption, and we say 'let 'em.' They devour their silly newspapers. They let themselves be distracted from public affairs by games, by gambling, by shows and coronations and every soft of mass stupidity, while the stars in their courses plot against them. We say nothing. Nothing audible. We mustn't destroy the simple faith that is marching them to disaster. We mustn't question their decisions. That wouldn't be democratic. And then we sit here and say privately that the poor riff-raff are failing to adapt themselves to those terrible new conditions -- as if they had had half a chance of knowing how things stand with them. They are shoved about by patriotisms, by obsolete religious prejudices, by racial delusions, by incomprehensible economic forces. Amid a growth of frightful machinery...

humanity society humans

H.G. Wells

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Man is now a new animal, a new and different animal; he can jump a hundred miles, see through brick walls, bombard atoms, analyse the stars, set about his business with the strength of a million horses. And so forth and so on. Yes. Yes. But all the same he goes on behaving like the weak little needy ape he used to be. He grabs, snarls, quarrels, fears, stampedes, and plays in his immense powder magazine until he seems likely to blow up the whole damned show.

mankind man humans

H.G. Wells

62acf07

This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people. || A thousands years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids sand. One hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. the only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours.

nature future collective-action environment humans

Douglas Coupland

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I've fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, 'My God is better than your God.' Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn't matter. Someone will tell you you're wrong, and he'll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we're just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.

war religion humans

David Baldacci

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I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what couldI tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. None of those things, however, came out of my mouth. All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you. I am haunted by humans.

words humans stories

Markus Zusak

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

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"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