Human Beings Quotes

“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns Fifty

“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.

We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.”
― Oliver Sacks

“I don't fancy colors of the face, I'm always attracted to colors of the brain.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

“It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”
― Alexander Hamilton

“as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth (or
anywhere else
they might
escape to).

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say ‘I want mine now,’ you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.”
― Marlon Brando

“Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks.”
“You might not think so if you were a duck.”
― Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things

“Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Quality, relevant content can't be spotted by an algorithm. You can't subscribe to it. You need people - actual human beings - to create or curate it.”
― Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web

“No up. No down. No sky. No ground. Just endless dark shot through with tiny spears of sunlight older than you and your entire species stacked end to end. You want to feel small? Spend sixty seconds in a Cyclone's cockpit, chum. Look out at the nothing and feel it looking back. Then you know exactly how much you add up to.”
― Jay Kristoff, Illuminae

“A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings - they needed each other even when they appeared hostile, and it was very sweet to be loved by them.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Burning Secret and other stories

“Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need
for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the flavors that enter and exit the physical body.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are”
― Niall Williams, History of the Rain

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
― Edward O. Wilson

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“human beings, cans of living preserves”
― J.M.G. Le Clézio, The Book of Flights

“This has suggested to some that the very structure of human thought is oppositional-that is to say, rational and associative, rather than linear and categorical.”
― Marcel Danesi, X-Rated!: The Power of Mythic Symbolism in Popular Culture

“Perry was leaning into my mother as he listened to what she said. They talked so close. He only leaned closer, his hands on the table, his leg touching hers.
"It's so risky," my mother said. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I'm human being. Because we're all human beings."
My mother closed her eyes and winced. Maybe her hearing aid was ringing and bothering her, but as I watched her turn down the volume, I wanted to tell her right then that she couldn't quiet all those outside voices forever.”
― Margaret McMullan, Sources of Light

“After all,' he said, “I suppose there are things that nothing can kill and that remain forever intact. It’s as if nothing could ever happen to human beings. They’re a species over which it’s not easy to triumph. They’ve a way of rising from the ashes, smiling and holding hands.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“The ability to laugh is what differentiates man from the beasts, but evidently one cannot always get oneself in a laughing mood.”
― Romain Gary

“You can only be a 'Human Being' if you are a 'Divine Being' first !”
― Syed Sharukh

“What was a person but someone who turned monstrous, anyway? What was a person, in Moss's experience, but a kind of demon.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Dead Astronauts

“It wasn't true, the evidence was faked, but the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us. Whether the Communists staged a diabolical lie or the Americans sowed plague in China, the one thing that matters is that, as a man, you're in the gutter, Colonel Babcock.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Most people do not know, or cannot accept what they are, and that this present reality is all that there is. The past is just a memory, and the future merely an expectation. There is only one continuous present moment, the now. This explains concepts such as religion, the afterlife, and reincarnation. It also explains why people make unrealistic promises when they marry, though they are not swans, are not biologically monogamous. They deny primal instincts, such as violence, hate, and war, naturally exist inside them. For they are, the great pretenders.”
― Robert Black