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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the common expression of a universal phenomenon, then we could finally ask the truly fundamental question raised by the prospect of Martian fossils. If life originates as a general property of the material universe under certain conditions (probably often realized), then how much can the basic structure and constitution of life vary from place to independent place?

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Independent, Views, Expression

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• The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Animal, Doubt, Machines

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• None of the three great apes is considered ancestral to modern man, Homo sapiens, but they remain the only other type of extant primate with which human beings share such close physical characteristics. From them we may learn much concerning the behavior of our earliest primate prototypes, because behavior, unlike bones, teeth, or tools, does not fossilize.

  Dian Fossey

  Men, Apes, Wildlife

  Dian Fossey (2000). “Gorillas in the Mist”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Men, Track, Heaven

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• Zoologists have reckoned there are up to at least 750 species of animal that have been observed exhibiting same-sex behaviour, or gender role transformation (which is very common in a wide range of fauna). There is only one species on earth, however, which has exhibited homophobia or transphobia. And that is the species homo sapiens sapiens. Us. So let's not allow the foolish, ignorant or bigoted ever to use words like "natural."

  Stephen Fry

  Sex, Animal, Ignorant

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• I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

  Eric Idle

  Trying, Different, Audience

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. October 20, 2003.

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• The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the "experimental" production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Different, Culture, Environment

  Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

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• For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters.

  Daniel Dennett

  Animal, Thinking, Views

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• Since the rise of Homo sapiens, human beings have been the smartest minds around. But very shortly - on a historical scale, that is - we can expect technology to break the upper bound on intelligence that has held for the last few tens of thousands of years.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Technology, Years, Historical

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• Christians tell me that they have a higher destiny than the lower animals, because Homo Sapiens can reason. But the Bible tells me that this gift of reason, which they call god-given, may be the match that lights the fires of hell for all who dare to use it, since whatever is not of faith is sin.

  Ruth Hurmence Green

  Christian, Animal, Destiny

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• Are the different species defined by paleontologists - Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and ourselves, Homo sapiens - all part of the same gene pool or not?

  Bryan Sykes

  Different, Pool, Genes

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• We call ourselves Homo sapiens--man the wise--because our intelligence is so important to us. For thousands of years, we have tried to understand how we think: that is, how a mere handful of matter can perceive, understand, predict, and manipulate a world far larger and more complicated than itself. The field of artificial intelligence, or AI, goes further still: it attempts not just to understand but also to build intelligent entities.

  Stuart J. Russell

  Wise, Intelligent, Men

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• There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.

  Bertrand Russell

  Animal, Race, Hydrogen Bomb

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