humans

"He sets self-preservation as his goal, yet bends all his efforts and his wits to the production of conditions which result in wars, disease, and other methods of self-destruction. His mental life must habituate itself to a code of contradictions, misfits, conflictions and inadequacies which inhibit coherent thought. In many ways the present life of humanity presents a quite mad spectacle to the unbiased eye. Yet withal, the average human being desires supremely to live happily and safely, to enjoy beauty and comfort and good-fellowship, and the stimulation of achievement. Where, then, is the missing link between man and his desires? What is the hidden error which dislocates his life? IT MUST BE FOUND. Until it is discovered arid recognized humanity will continue to wallow in the quagmire of confusion and destruction into which it has plunged. When powerful nations treat other nations without apology to anarchy, robbery, slaughter and persecution and the only remedy which can be found is further slaughter by those who would keep the peace (!), it is indeed no longer a world in which anyone can shirk the urgent responsibility for putting things straight, and for establishing a new and a better order.... It is the mentality of the public—made up of the mentalities of you and of myself—which rules the issue. We, and only we, are in the last analysis responsible."

"[AI] gets at the essence of what intelligence is, what humanity is, Anybody who has worked with AI for a while…realize[s] this is something so different and so deep that, we would need societal regulations to think about how to adapt... the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire or electricity or anything that we've done in the past."

"It is clear that so far human beings are not managing their world very well.... They... [are on a] planet which continues to roll unerringly upon its appointed path. The seasons follow each other with faithful regularity. Upon this revolving home they can find everything calculated to give them their hearts’ desires. Infinite beauties and infinite delights are theirs for the taking... There is sufficient space, sufficient nourishment and sufficient occupation for all.... Human beings have... amazing bodies, whose natural state is that of joyful health and energy. They have... mental powers whose possibilities are immeasurable, and creative ability which is allowing them to master all the substances and forces of nature one by one. They have been provided throughout their history with a succession of leaders and teachers who have bequeathed to them doctrines and laws which, although quite simple, would ensure an ideal social life... The picture before us of human quality and human achievement is kaleidoscopic, showing closely intermingling facets of beauty, of worth, of genius, of bestiality, of idiocy and of crime. ...Capable of creating beauty, he yet seems content to dwell mostly in conditions of hopeless ugliness. Of his magnificent body he makes on the whole a travesty. His mind, as an actual potent instrument, he usually ignores altogether. He sets self-preservation as his goal, yet bends all his efforts and his wits to the production of conditions which result in wars, disease, and other methods of self-destruction."

"I can see no hope for humanity so long as one's right to live depends upon one's ability to pay the cost of living imposed by those who exploit our daily needs."

"Our human nature is made out of peace, and peace is what we are made for. All troubles are in fact caused by the disruption of our original condition, which is both our origin and our destiny."

"All men by nature desire to know; the proof of this is the pleasure caused by sensations, for even apart from the usefulness, we enjoy them for themselves, and visual sensations more than the others."

"One man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbor; whilst another looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature. In a word, one man sees all things apart and in fragments, whilst another strives to discover the harmony, connection, unity of all. One of the great evils of society is, that men, occupied perpetually with petty details, want general truths, want broad and fixed principles."

"Before all other things, man is distinguished by his pursuit and investigation of Truth. And hence, when free from needful business and cares, we delight to see, to hear, and to communicate, and consider a knowledge of many admirable and abstruse things necessary to the good conduct and happiness of our lives: whence it is clear that whatsoever is True, simple, and direct, the same is most congenial to our nature as men. Closely allied with this earnest longing to see and know the truth, is a kind of dignified and princely sentiment which forbids a mind, naturally well constituted, to submit its faculties to any but those who announce it in precept or in doctrine, or to yield obedience to any orders but such as are at once just, lawful, and founded on utility. From this source spring greatness of mind and contempt of worldly advantages and troubles."

"It is essential to every inquiry about duty that we keep before our eyes how far superior man is by nature to cattle and other beasts: they have no thought except for sensual pleasure and this they are impelled by every instinct to seek; but man's mind is nurtured by study and meditation."

"Nature outweighing art begets roughness; art outweighing nature begets pedantry. Art and nature well blent make a gentleman."

"He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, "I am looking for a human.""

"The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature."

"Anarchists trust the best instincts of the people, and human nature dictates that where there is repression there will be resistance; where there is slavery, there will a struggle against it."

"Thus we discover that this blind and impersonal process produced humans not in a lightning flash, not in a sudden instant of creation, but as the result of accumulation. The origin of humans is not something that can be pinpointed at five million years, or one million years, or 100,000 years in the past, but, rather, occurs continuously over time. Our origin is the whole pattern of evolution, although there are key events that we must discover and identify. The things that make us human are acquired as a complex mosaic—we became upright four million years ago; we began to make tools two million years ago; we began to live all over the earth less than one million years ago; and possibly we only acquired language in the last 100,000 years or so. Each of these factors is an essential part of the process of becoming human. What makes human evolution such an endlessly fascinating story is trying to visualize the stages, imagining what sort of a creature could walk upright but not talk, make tools but not use fire, survive the rigors of the Ice Age but know nothing of agriculture and a settled way of life."

"Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d'agir d'une façon absurde."

"History often reproduces without reference to nationality some particular human type or class which becomes active and predominant for a time, and fades away when its task is finished. It is, however, not utterly lost, for the germ of it lies dormant yet ready to re-appear when the exigencies of the moment recall it. The reserve forces of human nature are inexhaustible and inextinguishable."

"Human nature is intractable stuff, hard jagged stuff, the kind of stuff that dreams are wrecked on."

"It is human nature to avoid being consumed by hypotheticals until they are staring us squarely in the face."

"The nature of man doesn’t change, and that’s reassuring, since we know the necessary conditions that can save him from himself."

"The fate of the Jewish people is the fate of Macbeth who stepped out of nature itself, clung to alien beings, and so in their service had to trample and slay everything holy in human nature."

"There is a startling similarity between Bacon’s prescription for mastering nature—“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed”—and Loyola’s formula for manipulating men—“Follow the other man’s course to your own goal.”"

"Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution."

"Certain basics about human nature do not change. Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them."

"Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed."

"Human nature is not of itself vicious."

"Nature … has born and reared all men alike, and created them genuine brothers, not in mere name, but in very reality, though this kinship has been put to confusion by the triumph of malignant covetousness, which has wrought estrangement instead of affinity and enmity instead of friendship."

"The needs of man, if life is to survive, are usually said to be four -- air, water, food, and in the severe climates, protection. But it is becoming clear today that the human organism has another absolute necessity... This fifth need is the need for novelty -- the need, throughout our waking life, for continuous variety in the external stimulation of our eyes, ears, sense organs, and all our nervous network."

"Humane nature I always thought the most useful object of humane reason, and to make the consideration of it pleasant and entertaining, I always thought the best employment of humane wit: other parts of philosophy may perhaps make us wiser, but this not only answers to that end, but makes us better too. Hence it was that the Oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of all men living, because he judiciously made choice of human nature for the object of his thoughts; an enquiry into which as much exceeds all other learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets, and compute the times of their circumvolutions."

"Therapeutic re-education … teaches the patient-student how to live with the contradictions that combine to make him into a unique personality; this is does in contrast to the older moral pedagogies, which tried to re-order the contradictions into a hierarchy of superior and inferior, good and evil. ... What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-bad, as his predecessors believed, but rather a jostling democracy of contending predispositions, deposited in every nature in roughly equal intensities. … Psychoanalysis if full of such mad logic; it is convincing only if the student of his own life accepts Freud’s egalitarian revision of the traditional idea of a hierarchical human nature."

"Human nature is governed by general self-interest and affected by genetic predisposition, which implies that there are likely to be limits to our moral sensitivities."

"In Aristotle the conception of human nature is perfectly sound; everything ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development."

"Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless. Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point. If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature."

"Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of the state necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too."

"Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended."

"It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured."

"You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents will always wave back."

"We're just like other people: We love to sing, we love to dance, we admire beautiful women. We are human, and sometimes very human."

"Ancestral humans behaved like Bonobos. Later, when we developed the family system, the use of sex for this sort of purpose became more limited, mainly occurring within families. A lot of the things we see, like pedophilia and homosexuality, may be leftovers that some now consider unacceptable in our particular society."

"God consecrates us with His Spirit; whom He adopts, He anoints; whom He makes sons, He makes saints; He doth not only give them a new name, but a new nature. God turns the wolf into a lamb; He makes the heart humble and gracious; He works such a change as if another soul did dwell in the same body."

"Human nature is evil; its goodness derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which he was born disappears. One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and principle with which one was born is lost. Hence, following human nature and indulging human emotions will inevitably lead to contention and strife, causing one to rebel against one’s proper duty, reduce principle to chaos, and revert to violence. Therefore one must be transformed by the example of a teacher and guided by the way of ritual and rightness before one will attain modesty and yielding, accord with refinement and ritual, and return to order."

"Were I (who to my cost already am One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man) A spirit free to choose, for my own share What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear, I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, Or anything but that vain animal, Who is so proud of being rational."

"I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things."

"We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence ."

"Man is not just another animal. Our species possesses something unique, a privilege that distinguishes us from all other life forms: Reason. It is so because of Reason that we have been able to make extraordinary discoveries, such as mathematics and rigorous logic, which have enabled us to understand the universe and our place in it.Evolutionists tell us that we are just another animal species, but they forget that we are the only ones capable of building a collective memory, such as writing, and transmitting knowledge through the centuries. Other species have not left traces of themselves as we have.This privilege allowed us not to be children of chaos, but of an extraordinary logical structure that we still try to understand today. Evolutionism ignores the extraordinary uniqueness of our species, which cannot be reduced to simple formulas."

"Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character."

"W'en you see a man in woe, Walk right up and say "hullo." Say "hullo" and "how d'ye do," "How's the world a-usin' you?" . . . . . W'en you travel through the strange Country t'other side the range, Then the souls you've cheered will know Who you be, an' say "hullo.""

"He held his seat; a friend to human race."

"Respect us, human, and relieve us, poor."

"Over the brink of it Picture it—think of it, Dissolute man. Lave in it—drink of it Then, if you can."

"Oh, God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!"