Homo Sapiens Quotes

• When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Communication, Trying, Communicate

  Nikki Giovanni (1994). “Racism 101”, William Morrow & Co

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• Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Passion, Humility, Atheism

  "Invented symbols". www.nytimes.com. January 05, 2006.

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• Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Crazy, Animal, Doe

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• It took nature 100 million years to make the ape stand up and become Homo sapiens. It took us only 10,000 to make knowing obsolete.

  Sugata Mitra

  Years, Knowing, Apes

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• The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Mean, Race, Dwelling

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• The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and spirit of his children should never escape, Homo Sapiens has employed praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, mutilation, and even torture to chain them to the culture pattern.

  Jules Henry

  Children, Freedom, Men

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• A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens-second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.

  Reynolds Price

  Home, Opposites, Silence

  Reynolds Price (1989). “A common room: essays, 1954-1987”, Scribner Paper Fiction

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• Ah, but is it not the mind that is the real grace of Homo sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit!

  Carol Emshwiller

  Art, Real, Thinking

  Carol Emshwiller (2013). “Carmen Dog”, p.92, Small Beer Press

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• there are two types of the male species of Homo sapiens: men, and Italian men.

  Letitia Baldrige

  Italian, Men, Two

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• What is human and the same about the males and females classified as Homo sapiens is much greater than the differences.

  Estelle Ramey

  Differences, Males, Female

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• The origin of Homo sapiens, as a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree, lies well below the boundary.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tree, Branches, Tiny

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• Alone among all creatures, the species that styles itself wise, Homo sapiens, has an abiding interest in its distant origins, knows that its allotted time is short, worries about the future and wonders about the past.

  John Noble Wilford

  Wise, Past, Worry

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• The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one-tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens gangs up to 70 percent of its sense receptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger and recognize reward, but also—more so—for beauty.

  Ellen Meloy

  Eye, Color, Light

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• My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

  Aldo Leopold

  Animal, Land, Water

  "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There". Book by Aldo Leopold. Chapter "The Land Ethic", p. 203-204, 1949.

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• Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

  P. D. James

  Eye, Mass Extinction, Light

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.24, Vintage

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• My single greatest challenge is to remain centered and loving in an overwhelmingly nonvegan world. In today's world, cruelty and exploitation of other beings - human and non-human alike - are accepted, practiced, and profited from by most every institution of society - from commerce and science to education and entertainment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Homo sapiens are either unaware of the cruelty or accept it as unavoidable and even normal.

  Michael Klaper

  Challenges, Majority, World

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• There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. The zoologist now has to start making comparisons. Where else is nudity at a premium.

  Desmond Morris

  Hair, Self, Two

  The Naked Ape introduction (1967)

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• No matter how inured you get to atrocities, you're still always stunned and shocked by how cruel and wasteful Homo sapiens can be.

  Steven Pinker

  Atrocities, Matter, Stills

  "Is Human Violence On The Wane?". Science Friday with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. October 7, 2011.

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• When you think about what Homo sapiens are about, you almost feel that we are replacing ourselves. We won't be able to breathe and breed on this earth, so we replace ourselves with androids that can do. The androids can go up into space and take the future of humanity forward because maybe we just bow out with a carbon-based epoch.

  Irvine Welsh

  Thinking, Space, Humanity

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Religious, Prayer, Real

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• Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Wish, Looks

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• What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles.

  J. William Fulbright

  Men, Air, Moles

  "Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker". Book by J. William Fulbright, 1963.

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• The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mistake, Diagnosis, Evolution

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• We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.

  Marston Bates

  Nature, Science, Thinking

  Horace Marden Albright, Marston Bates (1962). “The Horace M. Albright Conservation Lectureship”

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• What is there about the notion of a person, at law, that makes every living member of the species Homo sapiens a person, irrespective of their mental capacities, but excludes every nonhuman animal - again, irrespective of their mental capacities?

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Law, Capacity

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