#human beings

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. ↗

— Ma Jian

#basic #become #beings #expression #freedom

There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world. ↗

— Charlie Kaufman

#anything #approach #beings #completely #controlled

In all three cases, and for most human beings, the problem of suffering poses no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#beings #cases #difficult #human #human beings

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#beings #exert #god-given #god-given right #human

In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#beings #comic #human #human beings #i

It is something that most parents hope for in life: That their children will be moderately successful, polite, decent human beings. Anything on top of that is something you have no right to hope for, but we all do. ↗

— Jerry Kramer

#beings #children #decent #hope #human

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#ants #armies #beings #capture #ceaselessly

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature. ↗

— Edward Thorndike

#accustomed #beings #controlling #events #having

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#beings #cannot #choice #endowed #god

Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings. ↗

— R. D. Laing

#alienation #beings #destiny #human #human beings