#human

You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do. ↗

— Daniel H. Wilson

#humans #design

What if the preacher or father’s saying ‘Someone here’s lost and hopeless’ was tantamount to those Sun-Times horoscopes that are specially designed to be so universally obvious that they always give their horoscope readers that special eerie feeling of particularity and insight, exploiting the psychological fact that most people are narcissistic and prone to the illusion that they and their problems are uniquely special and that if they’re feeling a certain way then surely they’re the only person who is feeling like that. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#horoscope #humans #narcissism #preach #priest

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell. ↗

— Andre Malraux

#beings #call #despise #force #hell

The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival. ↗

— James J. Gibson

#degree #human #learn #least #must

People started down the road with good intentions, but the moment the road became rough or difficult, they'd abandon it. ↗

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

#human-nature #dreams

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#also #beings #dream #dreaming #human

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#ethics #humans #vegetarianism #dreams

Forget dice rolling or boxes of chocolates as metaphors for life. Think of yourself as a dreaming robot on autopilot, and you'll be much closer to the truth. ↗

— Albert-László Barabási

#dreams

I am a shark. A shark who dreamed he was a man. ↗

— Rick Yancey

#metaphor #dreams

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#colonizer #danger #fear #folly #humanity