Home > Topic > the human species
1 " Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside. "
― Jess C. Scott , The Other Side of Life
2 " In general, if we leave out the atheistic fraction of world population that possesses no notable optimistic or positive Qualia of God, the majority of the human species possesses a beneficial Qualia of God enriched with blissful sentiments. "
― Abhijit Naskar , What is Mind?
3 " I want gifts and Christmas music. I don’t care how many Draziri are out there. They won’t take Christmas from me.”“Yes, but we don’t have a suitable male,” Orro said. “And only one dog.”I looked at him.“What is this Christmas?” Wing asked.Orro turned from the stove. “It’s the rite of passage during which the young males of the human species learn to display aggression and use weapons.”Sean stopped what he was doing and looked at Orro.“The young men go out in small packs,” Orro continued. “They brave the cold and come into conflict with other packs and they have to prove their dominance through physical combat. Their fathers teach them lessons in the proper use of swear words, and the young men have to undergo tests of endurance, like holding soap in their mouths and licking cold metal objects.”Sean made a strangled noise.“At the end of their trials, they go to see a wise elder in a red suit to prove their worth. If they are judged worthy, the family erects a ceremonial tree and presents them with gifts of weapons.”Sean was clearly struggling, because his head was shaking.“Also,” Orro added, “a sacrificial poultry is prepared and then given to the wild animals, probably to appease the nature spirits.”Sean roared with laughter. "
― Ilona Andrews , One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles, #3)
4 " Λαθράνθρωπος, οι = ἂνθρωπος/οι, που λαθραῖα συν~κατα~λέγονται στο εἲδος των ἀνθρῶπων ~ Lathranthrope, Lathranthropes = the person or persons that get smuggled into being included within the Human species neology by Ale3ia "
―
5 " According to Kant’s late work on the Principles of Politics (1793), the irreducible problem of the human species is the following: the human being is an animal and thus, to live peacefully with other animals of its kind, absolutely needs a master. "
6 " Beauty is an illusion, created by Mother Nature to drive the human species in the path of reproduction. In reality, beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy. "
― Abhijit Naskar , The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series)
7 " Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea! "
― Christopher Hitchens
8 " what use was it to observe the human species and try to understand it? Their rules were fathomless and no mire fixed than the wind "
9 " The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature. "
― U.G. Krishnamurti ,
10 " I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. "
― Julian Huxley ,
11 " It is a strange thing that the human species can only go three days without water and three weeks without food, before the body dies. Yet, so many people can go years hanging onto pain and feeling emotionally dead inside. I suppose if it was the other way around more people would go to school to be morticians because of the booming business, or pastors would have to hand out Valium with the sacrament, just to keep the census high. "
― Shannon L. Alder
12 " Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it. "
― Eliezer Yudkowsky , Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
13 " But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man. "
― Marguerite Yourcenar , Memoirs of Hadrian
14 " There is that sense that we have to all come together, the challenges have become so great for the human species that it's going to take all of us to find our way out. One of the ways to achieve this goal, of course, is to expand the freedom of religions so that those people who use psychedelics within their religious practise are able to do so. -Rick Doblin "
― , Breaking Convention: Essays on Psychedelic Consciousness
15 " Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, which the most depraved mores still have difficulty destroying, since everyday one sees in our theaters someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person, and who, were he in the tyrant's place, would intensify the torments of his enemy still more; [like the bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or like Alexander of Pherae, who did not dare attend the performance of any tragedy, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, and yet who listened impassively to the cries of so many citizens who were killed everyday on his orders. Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts.] Mandeville has a clear awareness that, with all their mores, men would never have been anything but monsters, if nature had not given them pity to aid their reason; but he has not seen that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues that he wants to deny in men. In fact, what are generosity, mercy, and humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general. Benevolence and even friendship are, properly understood, the products of a constant pity fixed on a particular object; for is desiring that someone not suffer anything but desiring that he be happy? "
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
16 " Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show. "
― Robert Wright , The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
17 " No one has yet determined the power of the human species . . . what it may perform by instinct, and what it may accomplish with rational determination. "
― Brian Herbert , House Harkonnen (Prelude to Dune #2)
18 " Past and present religious atrocities have occured not because we are evil, but because it is a fact of nature that the human species is, biologically, only partly rational. Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder. "
― Christopher Hitchens , God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
19 " The remnant of the human species must understand that faith was the narcotic that fueled the insanity of religion.Conclusion: Invisible love is wasted. Invisible evidence is worthless. Invisible God is non-existent. "
― C.J. Anderson , Enter Ruinland (Ruinland #1)
20 " Mankind's most dangerous enemy is the human imagination. What their minds can imagine is far more malicious than the deepest furnaces of their chimerical Hell. They imagined an invisible god to corrupt their thoughts with everlasting fantasies and eternal lies. When the human species invented God the darkness of imagination was present. Mankind imagined an unseen creator to form their bodies and then to reform them indestructible upon death. The mortal truth became the immortal delusion. They possessed no knowledge of God so they invented him. Where human knowledge ends the imagined God begins. "
― C.J. Anderson , Survive Ruinland: Chronicles of Lauren Vasquez
