#humans

Through the window, I saw the beautiful world outside: the sky, the sun, the cacti, the rocks, and the dirt. How I longed to return to it! I licked at the air, trying to smell the desert's delicious dusty scent, but could not. How was I able to see it without smelling it? Did humans control scents as well as the temperature and the waters? Is that what windows were for, to keep out scents? Why did they wish to put invisible barriers between themselves and the world? ↗

— Patrick Jennings

#scent #scents #snakes #wild #windows

If you could have walked on the planet before humans lived here, maybe the Ivory Coast would have seemed more beautiful than La Côte d'Azur. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #earth #french-riviera #humans #ivory-coast

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 work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#affected #ants #humans #i #i think

Now may every living thing, young or old, weak or strong, living near or far, known or unknown, living or departed or yet unborn, may every living thing be full of bliss. ↗

— Anonymous

#bliss #humans #joy #life #living

We don't pray for the land. We pray for the humans, all humans... starting with the president, Mohammed Morsi, and all officials, and for God to give everyone wisdom and responsibility to manage the affairs of this country and its people in true Egyptian spirit. ↗

— Pope Theodoros II

#country #egyptian #everyone #give #god

Yet human intelligence has another force, too: the sense of urgency that gives human smarts their drive. Perhaps our intelligence is not just ended by our mortality; to a great degree, it is our mortality. ↗

— Adam Gopnik

#humans #ingenuity #intelligence #mortality #smarts

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#birds #fish #humans #intelligence #morally-valuable

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength. ↗

— Ovid

#classics #greek #humans #intelligence #metamorphoses