Human Condition Quotes

• Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

  George Soros

  Mistake, Failure, Understanding

  George Soros, Byron Wien, Krisztina Koenen (1995). “Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve”, p.11, John Wiley & Sons

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• No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Depression, Death, Pain

  "A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role". The Observer, June 29, 1958.

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• The human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.

  Katherine Center

  Beauty, Imperfection, Humans

  Katherine Center (2009). “Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel”, p.226, Ballantine Books

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• Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

  Socrates

  Change, Remember, Fortune

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• 
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.

  Janet Fitch

  Inspirational, Disappointment, Loneliness

  "White Oleander". Book by Janet Fitch, 1999.

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• We see the world through the lens of all our experiences; that is a fundamental part of the human condition.

  Madeleine M. Kunin

  Lenses, Fundamentals, World

  "Gingrich and Limbaugh: Poor Privileged White Men Grappling with Sotomayor" by Madeleine M. Kunin, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 2, 2009.

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• The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

  Carl Jung

  Friendship, Relationship, Positive

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.49, Psychology Press

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• I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.

  Nicolas Cage

  Drama, Thinking, People

  "'You've got to be able to break the wall'". Interview with Dorian Lynskey, www.theguardian.com. February 16, 2007.

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• Suffering is part of the human condition, and it comes to us all. The key is how we react to it, either turning away from God in anger and bitterness or growing closer to Him in trust and confidence.

  Billy Graham

  Keys, Suffering, Growing

  Billy Graham (1998). “Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham”, HarperCollins

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• Literature gives us models of living human beings who may not agree with us and even be our enemies. D. H. Lawrence said that the purpose of literature was to expand our sympathies. To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. And this conflict cannot be easily reconciled. The tension is always there as a kind of a pain in the human condition.

  John Updike

  Dream, Pain, Reality

  Source: www.today.com

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• This idea of how everything is interconnected, and the impermanence of things.. It sums up the human condition to me, and it helps me on my path.

  Jeff Bridges

  Ideas, Path, Helping

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• I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

  Werner Herzog

  Thinking, Age, Literature

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• My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

  Wole Soyinka

  Struggle, Reading, Black History

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Apr 09, 2015

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• The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

  Mark Twain

  Race, Coward, Mankind

  Mark Twain (2015). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.130, Univ of California Press

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• The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

  William Shatner

  Quality, Stories, Humans

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• I think all these great comforts that come from the human condition of trying to make things easier on ourselves also have these pitfalls, where things become so easy that we forget how enjoyable building a fence can be.

  Nick Offerman

  Thinking, Trying, Pitfalls

  "Nick Offerman on Parks And Recreation and his comically oversized penis". Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. July 18, 2012.

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• I think that obviously the quest for purpose, or meaning, or understanding to existence is something that I always think about, always deal with. I guess everybody does - that existential crisis of human condition. It's nothing new. But I'd love to come across something that really made me believe in something.

  Conor Oberst

  Believe, Thinking, Understanding

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.

  May Sarton

  Artist, Self, Joy

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.52, Open Road Media

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• He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Hope, Despair

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• To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

  Brené Brown

  Gratitude, Mean, Blessing

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• People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Practice, Two

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.

  Paul Tillich

  Character, Evil, Creative

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• I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

  Maya Angelou

  Talking, Black, Speak

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• It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

  Hugh Laurie

  Lying, House, Variables

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• I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.

  David McCullough

  Art, Military, Technology

  Source: belmontvision.com

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