#human

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#human-nature #individuality #liberty #strength #uniqueness

Rotten people will taste rotten ice cream. ↗

— Sarah Chow

#human-nature #humor #food

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#intelligence #science #change

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state. ↗

— Adam Michnik

#human-rights #politics #totalitarianism #freedom

Freedom - that word that the human spirit feeds: that no one can explain, and anyone who does not understand. ↗

— Cecília Meireles

#human-nature #spirit #freedom

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego. ↗

— Pema Chödrön

#confusion #humanity #experience

In every aspect of life, including the economic dimension, we are always challenged to do the right thing. In many cases in the market system, which allows a great deal of latitude for human choice, people can get carried away to excess. ↗

— Lee R. Raymond

#always #aspect #away #carried #cases

In that nanosecond of enlightenment I knew that the human spirit survives the death of the physical body and I understood that my wandering soul needed to get back into its earthly habitat. ↗

— Janet Bettag

#brain-aneurysm #enlightenment #human-spirit #inspirational #near-death-experience

We are medium-sized mammals who only prosper because we've developed a half-arsed ability to terraform the less suitable bits of the planet we evolved on, and we're conscious of our inevitable decay and death, and we can't live anywhere else. There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die. ↗

— Charles Stross Cory Doctorow

#death #humanity #life #religion #death

When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice and in the whole city they were chopping up my heart's lanterns when they would blindfold me with the dark handkerchief of Law and from my anxious temples of desire fountains of blood would squirt out when my life had become nothing nothing but the tic-tac of a clock, I discovered I must must must love, insanely. ↗

— Forough Farrokhzad

#humanity #love #violence #death