#humanity

The most reliable topic for small talk is the goings-on of stars whether they’re rising or falling, and whether nor not a particular story is truth or fiction. This is way out of balance. It invades the privacy of men and women who didn’t give up being human when they became famous, and it negates the meaning inherent in our own lives. (300) ↗

— Victoria Moran

#compassion #fame #gossip #humanity #privacy

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

If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility. ↗

— Niall Ferguson

#humanity #man #money #money

Human desire is the criterion of all truth and all good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base... ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#god #good #humanity #religion #motivational

You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#murder #responsibility #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