#humanit

Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up? ↗

— Peter Orner

#history #humanity #mankind #march #need

Why did I, like thousands of others, have to carry a cross I hadn't chosen, a cross which was not made for my shoulders and which didn't concern me? Who decided to come rummaging around in my obscure existence, invade my gray anonymity, my meager tranquility, and bowl me like a little ball in a great game of skittles? God? Well, in that case, if He exists, if He really exists, let Him hide His face. Let Him put His two hands on His head, and let Him bow down. It may be, as Peiper used to teach us, that many men are unworthy of Him, but now I know that He, too, is unworthy of most of us, and that is the creature is capable of producing horror, it's solely because his Creator has slipped him the recipe for it. ↗

— Philippe Claudel

#evil #god #horror #humanity #life

[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men. ↗

— Herman Melville

#beasts #human-condition #humanity #men #men

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history. ↗

— Martin Cruz Smith

#humanity #nature #nuclear #nuclear-war #pollution

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings. ↗

— George Orwell

#humanity #saints #scholars #nature

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#domesticating #human-nature #humanity #morality #nature

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think. ↗

— Peter Watts

#humanity #nature #nature

Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#humanity #nature #nature

Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pull back the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics, human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatness of this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewn across the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—my soul purpose. ↗

— Brian Bowers

#human-nature #humanity #longing #love #philosophy-of-life

Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#humanity #nature