2,158 Quotes About Humans

I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.

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

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.

Sometimes, humans were more monstrous than anything else.

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.

Humans and their wars. You call me monster, , but look what you've gone and done to one another! Good riddance to you now and, if I'm lucky, forever. Have your war. I'll have my radish stew.

How very like humans to pervert a message of love and peace to make it into an ideology of war and oppression to serve their own ends.

At root, I think that any given technology (think nuclear power, gunpowder, the written word...) has the potential to improve our lives, wound it, and also to create unexpected accidents. It's not the technology that's the problem, it's us, the users. However angelic or demonic, or thoughtful or thoughtless we happen to be is then amplified by our technologies.

Neuroanatomy, political history, and introspection all offer evidence that human beings are quite capable of resisting the urge to surrender to every impulse of reptilian core of brain.