#human

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#philosophy #society #food

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas. It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#community #creative #fisherman #human #imagination

To be ethical is to endeavor to find one's proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world. ↗

— Gary Steiner

#humanity #morality #speciesism #life

For that matter, all this, is there a God? Corlis -- I don't care!" "Huh," I considered. "I guess I don't either". "Most people don't! All they care about," he added grimly, "is being right". ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#family

The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already... begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvred in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result… The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#science #experience

The great thing about life-the most magnificent thing about being these sentient human beings-is that we have been given the power of choice. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#life-experience #power-of-choice #experience

...my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#life

It is not about how much money we make or how big and powerful our work appears to others, it is about the love with which we put into each act of kindness toward another human being. ↗

— Joyce Vissell

#human-being #kindness #love #love

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#humor #mission #pg-wodehouse #writing #humor

Well, I just don’t want you to think that this piece of shit is anything other than a pathetic, human defect. Nothing more. Not a monster, not a bogeyman. Nothing but another reason to feel better about yourself. Understand that it’s just a person - not worth devoting any nightmares to. ↗

— Jhonen Vasquez

#cynical #human #humor #jthm #humor