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41 " It is a strange sort of naturalism that singles out religion to be purged from human life. Few things are more natural for humans than religion. To be sure, religion has brought much suffering. So has love and the pursuit of knowledge. Like them, religion is part of being human. "
― John N. Gray , Seven types of atheism
42 " Genocide is as human as art or prayer. "
― John N. Gray , Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
43 " The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. "
44 " It is not what we say that hurts but how we say it. "
― John N. Gray
45 " Today’s Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But ‘humanity’ is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it. "
― John N. Gray , The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom
46 " What is so admirable in being ruled by a need for peace of mind ? "
47 " Modern humanity insists violence is inhuman. Everyone says nothing is dearer to them than life – except perhaps freedom, for which some assert they would willingly die. "
48 " When people say their goal in life is to be happy they are telling you they are miserable. "
― John N. Gray , Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
49 " All these philosophies(Stoicism,Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism)have a common failing.They imagine life can be ordered by human reason.Either the Mind can devise a way of life that is secure from loss ,or else it can control the emotions so that it can withstand any loss. In fact ,neither how we live nor the emotions we feel can be controlled in this way.Our lives are shaped by chance and our emotions by the body.Much of human life -and much of philosophy - is an attempt to divert ourselves from this fact. "
50 " If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said. 'It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions,' commented the gambler and conservationist John Aspinall. "
51 " The calls of birds and the traces left by wolves to mark off their territories are no less forms of language than the sings of humans. What is distinctively human is not the capacity for language. It is the crystallisation of language in writing. "
52 " Social evolution is an exceptionally bad idea. "
53 " But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. Meditation may give us a fresher view of things, but it cannot uncover them as they are in themselves. The lesson of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science is that we are descendants of a long lineage, only a fraction of which is human. We are far more than the traces that other humans have left in us. Our brains and spinal cords are encrypted with traces of far older worlds. "
54 " At its worst human life is not tragic but unmeaning. The soul is broken, but life lingers on. As the will fails, the mask of tragedy falls aside. What remains is only suffering. The last sorrow cannot be told. If the dead could speak we would not understand them. We are wise to hold to the semblance of tragedy; the truth unveiled would only blind us. "
55 " Humans need something other than the human world, or else they go mad. "
56 " Few societies have been stable enough and resilient enough to renew themselves in recognizable forms over long stretches of time. History is littered with civilizations that have been utterly destroyed. Everywhere, the self-assured confidence of priests, scribes and intellectuals has been mocked by unexpected events, leaving all their prayers, records and treatises wholly forgotten unless they are retrieved from oblivion by future archaeologists and historians. "
57 " We think we have some kind of privileged access to our own motives and intentions. In fact we have no clear insight into what moves us to live as we do. The stories we tell ourselves are like the messages that appear on Ouija boards. If we are authors of our lives, it is only in retrospect. "
58 " He criticized Christianity, but his objections were not so much intellectual as moral and aesthetic: he attacked the Christian religion because of its impact on the quality of life. Devaluing the natural world for the sake of a spiritual realm, Christianity could not be other than hostile to happiness: ‘man’, Leopardi wrote, ‘was happier before Christianity than after it. "
59 " Humans cannot become cats. Yet if they set aside any notion of being superior beings, they may come to understand how cats can thrive without anxiously inquiring how to live. Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not. "
60 " The belief that humans are gradually improving is the central article of faith of modern humanism. When wrenched from monotheistic religion, however, it is not so much false as meaningless. "