#human

In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable. ↗

— Kevin Alan Lee

#government #health-care #health-care-system #humanism #medical

When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of that problem is political will; we could take a lot of people off the streets tomorrow if we made it a national priority. But I have also come to realize that NASA had it easy. Rockets conform to the unchanging laws of physics. We know where the moon will be at a given time; we know precisely how fast a spacecraft will enter or exist the earth's orbit. If we get the equations right, the rocket will land where it is supposed to--always. Human beings are more complex than that. A recovering drug addict does not behave as predictably as a rocket in orbit. We don't have a formula for persuading a sixteen-year-old not to drop out of school. But we do have a powerful tool: We know that people seek to make themselves better off, however they may define that. Our best hope for improving the human condition is to understand why we act the way we do and then plan accordingly. Programs, organizations, and systems work better when they get the incentives right. It is like rowing downstream. ↗

— Charles Wheelan

#goverment #humanity #incentives #politics #social-policy

Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#heredity #humanity #science #science

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#science #science

Science explained people, but could not understand them. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#science #science

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library ↗

— Carl Sagan

#communal-memory #humanity #humanity-and-society #humans #libraries

We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self destruction. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#society

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. ↗

— Sam Harris

#atheism #belief #ethics #humanism #religion

When I look at a person, I see a person - not a rank, not a class, not a title. ↗

— Criss Jami

#discernment #equality #geniune #human #human-being

We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly. ↗

— John Pilger

#journalism #justice #media #peace #media