Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere. C S Lewis
Humans are amphibians ... half-spirit and half-animal ... as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation – the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
That world has gone. The anchors have dissolved or are dissolving. There is neither a monetary nor religious anchor. The pound floats; Catholicism is mired in the horrifying sexual antics of its priests; CEOs pay themselves salaries without limits. The great visions of how one might associate with others – in an Empire, a Commonwealth, a socialist economy, a commune, a religious community, a trade union or even a company – have become implausible. We are individualists in a not very sovereign nation state being buffeted around by economic forces beyond our control. We madly find meaning in cults and celebrity, overinvesting in family as the last redoubt of meaning, while reconciling ourselves to fewer public services and cynical companies even while the country is very much richer. Will Hutton, The Baby Boomers and the Price of Personal Freedom
O wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound. Fulke Greville, Mustapha, 1609
Lastly, in the deepest and dimmest recesses of the unconscious, there lurks the nature of man himself. On it, clearly, he will concentrate the supreme effort of his mind and of his creative initiative. Mankind will not have ceased to crawl before God, Tsar and Capital only in order to surrender meekly to dark laws of heredity and blind sexual selection. Man will strive to control his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the height of his conscious mind, and to bring clarity into them; to channel his will-power into his unconscious depths; and in this way he will lift himself into new eminence. Vladimir Lenin
Human existence must be a kind of error. It may be said of it, it’s bad today, and every day will get worse until the worst of all happens. Arthur Schopenhauer
To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-content, the torture of self-mistrust and the torture of the vanquished. (Humanity & Wish & Enemy) Friedrich Nietzsche
To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Giving style to one’s character – a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye. Friedrich Nietzsche
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. Friedrich Nietzsche
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. (Humanity & Action & Understanding) Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 1677
I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think. Sigmund Freud
In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless. Sigmund Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939
To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. Alfred Adler, Austrian psychologist, 1870-1937
There is no more ungraceful figure than that of a humanitarian with an eye to the main chance. Lord Hugh Cecil, The Times 24 June 1901
It’s the golden age of human deviancy. Rab C Nesbitt s5e5: Racket, BBC 1996
We kid ourselves we’re rational beings but what we really are is open wounds on legs. See, if you want to stay rational, don’t live. Rab C Nesbitt s7e4: Property
I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror. J G Ballard, re writing of Crash
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. George Orwell
When it comes to the pinch human beings are heroic. George Orwell
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. George Orwell
Four legs good, two legs bad. George Orwell
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose
Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. George Orwell
It’s not so much staying alive, it’s being human that’s important. 1984 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Gregor Fisher & Cyril Cusack & Suzanna Hamilton & James Walker & Andrew Wilde & Corina Seddon & Rupert Baderman & John Boswall & Phyllis Logan & Roger Lloyd Pack et al, director Michael Radford
Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer. John Keats
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. John Keats
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. William Wordsworth, Hart-Leap Well
An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King
We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden … Joni Mitchell, Woodstock
To err is human, but it feels divine. Mae West
If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on the headstone might well be: It seemed a good idea at the time. Rebecca West
The only real notion is humanity. Paul Farmer
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink. e e cummings, Le Guerre no 2 1925
Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality. T S Eliot, 1888-1965, Four Quartets ‘Burnt Norton’, 1936
It is more comfortable to feel that we are a slight improvement on a monkey than such a fallin’ off from the angels. Finley Peter Dunne
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Thomas Gray
I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun! Walter Raleigh, 1861-1922, Wishes of an Elderly Man