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Quotations about humans

Douglas AdamsHuman beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

 - Douglas Adams

Tags:   experience  humans  learning  

Bertrand RussellIn the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot.

On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.

 - Bertrand Russell

Tags:   elements  humans  space  universe  

Friedrich NietzscheOnce upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Tags:   humans  knowledge  universe  

Robert HeinleinThe capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

 - Robert A. Heinlein

Tags:   humans  mind  nonsense  repression  violence  

Henry David ThoreauI have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

 - Henry David Thoreau

Tags:   animals  food  humans  

Mark TwainIf you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

 - Mark Twain

Tags:   dogs  humans  

Dean KoontzNo matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.

 - Dean Koontz

Tags:   dogs  humans  innocence  

Charles DarwinMan with all his noble qualities . . . with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system. . . still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

 - Charles Darwin

Tags:   humans  intellect  origins  

Albert EinsteinOften in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.

 - Albert Einstein

Tags:   adaptation  atomic bomb  evolution  habitat  humans  

Michel de MontaigneMan is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   humans  religion  

Saul BellowA novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part...it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.

 - Saul Bellow

Isaac AsimovOne, a robot must not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

 - Isaac Asimov

Tags:   AI  artificial intelligence  humans  laws  robotics  robots  

Leo TolstoyOur body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.

 - Leo Tolstoy

Tags:   humans  life  remedies  

Mencius The reason why I say that all humans have hearts that are not unfeeling toward others is this. Suppose someone suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well: anyone in such a situation would have a feeling of alarm and compassion -- not because one sought to get in good with the child's parents, not because one wanted fame among one's neighbors and friends, and not because one would dislike the sound of the child's cries. From this we can see that if one is without the feeling of compassion, one is not human.

 - Mencius

Tags:   compassion  humans  sympathy