Human Condition Quotes - Page 8

• The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Winning, Forever, Battle

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• In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.

  Baz Luhrmann

  Stories, Intriguing, Mechanic

  Interview With Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.

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• It's far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

  Judith Martin

  Humble, Humility, Quality

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• I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.

  Mercedes McCambridge

  Insanity, Disease, Alcoholics

  Mercedes McCambridge (1981). “The quality of mercy: an autobiography”, Crown

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• Self-respect - The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Respect, Self, Personality

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Diversity, Bears

  Essais bk. 3, ch. 2 (1580)

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• You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Cities, Perspective, Poverty

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• The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same - that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition.

  David Bellos

  Practice, Names, Two

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• There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.

  George Santayana

  Book, Hands, Interesting

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.

  Jon Krakauer

  Strong, Blow, Hands

  FaceBook post by Jon Krakauer from Jul 27, 2012

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• Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.

  Jane Yolen

  Important, Helping, Language

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

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• The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Psychics, Feelings, Peculiar

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Writing, Stories, Levitation

  "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. April 18, 2014.

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• My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature and by no other feeling. My love for justice and striving to contribute towards the improvement of human conditions are quite independent from my scientific interests.

  Albert Einstein

  Nature, Hard Work, Independent

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.18, Princeton University Press

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• The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit.

  Paul Kurtz

  Leaving, Atheism, Deceit

  Paul Kurtz “Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz”, Transaction Publishers

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• When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition.

  Brian Wesbury

  Creativity, People, Community

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• The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.

  Tom Clancy

  Memorable, Technology, Today

  "Vonnegut and Clancy on Technology". Interview with Sarah Schafer, www.inc.com. December 15, 1995.

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• We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life "hidden with Christ in God" in our everyday human conditions.

  Oswald Chambers

  Faith, Christian, Inspiration

  Oswald Chambers (2013). “Utmost: Classic Readings and Prayers from Oswald Chambers”, p.82, Discovery House

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• If you can't return a favor, pass it on.

  Louise Brown

  Inspirational, Favors, Return

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• The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Religious, Loss, Men

  Theodore Dalrymple (2005). “Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses”, Ivan R Dee

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• Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.

  Miguel Syjuco

  Want, Angst, Purgatory

  Miguel Syjuco (2010). “Ilustrado: A Novel”, p.208, Macmillan

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• In Technologized Desire, the cultural pathologies that mark the panic ecstasy and terminal doom of the posthuman condition are powerfully rehearsed in the language of science fiction. Here, images of prosthetic subjects, zombies, cut-ups and armies of the medieval dead actually slip off the pages of literature to become the terminal hauntology of these technologized times. Technologized Desire is nothing less than a brilliant data screen of future memories. Read it well: it's a survival guide for bodies flatlined by the speed of accelerating technology.

  Arthur Kroker

  Memories, Army, Cutting

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• Flowers are not symbols of power. Flowers are too brief, too frail, to elicit much hope of eternity. In truth, flowers are far removed from the human condition and from all human hope. For a moment, in that moment, flowers are simply beautiful.

  Sharman Apt Russell

  Beautiful, Flower, Moments

  Sharman Apt Russell (2002). “Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers”, p.2, Basic Books

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• It's an actor's job to play all the human conditions - light, dark, and medium.

  Tim Daly

  Jobs, Dark, Light

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions.

  Paulo Coelho

  Writing, Mean, Ideas

  "Paulo Coelho: 'I had an enormous amount of fun being a hippy" by Shahesta Shaitly, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2014.

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