#hum

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, ‘We came in peace for all Mankind.’ As the United States was dropping seven and a half megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#human #human-nature #moon #war #nature

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. ↗

— Nikos Kazantzakis

#human-nature #soul #uncertainty #nature

...you’d be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical. ↗

— Dianna Hardy

#human-behaviour #human-nature #logic #making-sense-of-the-world #nonsense

The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#nature #nature

Ambition interests me because it’s such a surefire indicator of damage. ↗

— Peter Morgan

#nature

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

#life #love #need #life

Ignorance is hardly unusual Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#ignorance #nature

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings. ↗

— George Orwell

#humanity #saints #scholars #nature

As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. [This] clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. ↗

— Ernst Haeckel

#humble #nature #realisation #nature

Every time the sky cries, it is because an angel has died... Lucifer started a war in Heaven, and it persists even now. So if God cannot keep his angels under control, what makes you believe that he can keep humanity under control? ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#fantasy #god #human-nature #nature