#humans

we are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of true romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. i do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. this is what makes your self-respect so important, and i don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness ↗

— William S Burroughs

#humans #people #philosophy #respect

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#science #science

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library ↗

— Carl Sagan

#communal-memory #humanity #humanity-and-society #humans #libraries

Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you. ↗

— Daniel Quinn

#humanity #humans #life #ownership #life

I find humans tremendously interesting. ↗

— David Brin

#humans #i #interesting #tremendously

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#bomb #brains #culture #deep #deep space

A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation. ↗

— Ann Druyan

#center #creation #earth #ego #expression

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet. ↗

— Freeman Dyson

#finish #human #humans #important #important thing

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#complicated #earth #humans #most #next

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