Quotes about Humans

But when nothing is valued for what it is, everything is destined to be wasted. Once the values of things refer only to their future usefulness, then an infinite withdrawal of value from the living present has begun. Nothing (and nobody) can then exist that is not theoretically replaceable by something (or somebody) more valuable. The country that we (or some of us) had thought to make our home becomes instead 'a nation rich in natural resources'; the good bounty of the land begins its mechanical metamorphosis into junk, garbage, silt, poison, and other forms of 'waste.' "The inevitable result of such an economy is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime's devotion. 'Waste,' in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans--the unborn, the old, 'disinvested' farmers, the unemployed, the 'unemployable.' Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ashheap or the dump.

The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder--but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him.  If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him.  The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

When I look at an ape, I see myself and all humans.  When a racist looks at an ape, they see only an African man or an Asian man.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Most of the history is a divine work of fiction.

Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?

A good many  humans, judge others not based on God's Law but based on the perception of God's Laws that we have been raised to believe or through study or experience have come to believe.

"We share half our genes with the banana."

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?"

"I believe that there is only one story in the world...Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil...A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?"

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

"I've noticed that the only ones who celebrate 'the triumph of the human spirit' are humans."

Our false self is the last remnant of the animal nature within our psyche: the last problem humans are to overcome in order to be fully human.

In order to satisfy one human stomach, so many lives are taken away. We must promote vegetarianism. It is extremely important.

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash; that one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

If man were crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat

One is expected to know things, to believe things.  Knowing and believing are all in your head - there is nothing in your heart.  If you cannot feel that the earth is your grandmother, then of course you will find it easy to rape her, to behave as if she is under your dominion.  You will find it easy to believe that we humans are the dominant species, and to act as though the earth and everything on it are ours to do with as we please.  ... if all human beings were taken away, life on earth would flourish.

The Telesterion Statement:

"This is the most important spiritual realization of our time; that we humans are large-brained animals on the surface of a planet."

- Bill Eichman  "Almost nobody get's this one. A classic example of 'Can't see the forest for the trees'."