Human History Quotes - Page 6

• Name me any liquid — except our own blood — that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to mark our status as human beings, from the rudest peasant festival to the mystery of the Eucharist.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Wine, Blood, Names

  "Wine Buyers Guide".

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• Nothing has ever looked like that ever in all of human history.

  John Green

  Hipster, Humans

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.87, Penguin

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• You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances... it's our only home. And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to seize this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.

  Al Gore

  War, Believe, Home

  "An Inconvenient Truth". Documentary, www.imdb.com. June 30, 2006.

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• But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind - too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

  Ronald Reagan

  Freedom, Hatred, Liberty

  Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, delivered 12 June 1987, West Berlin

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• One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there; but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wickedness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides itself so much on its advantages.

  Immanuel Kant

  Pride, Men, Vanity

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• if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

  David Gelernter

  Intellectual, Important, Would Be

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• When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there arose up in me the fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, did not, with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation.

  Adolf Hitler

  Destiny, Long, People

  Adolf Hitler (1971). “Mein Kampf”, Mariner Books

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• The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning.

  John F. Kennedy

  Land, Southern, Rising

  Speech to Congress on Urgent National Needs, delivered 25 May 1961, Washington, D.C.

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• People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Spiritual, Sea, People

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• Take away the Holocaust and what do you have left? Without their precious Holocaust, what are the Jews? Just a grubby little bunch of international bandits and assassins and squatters who have perpetrated the most massive, cynical fraud in human history.

  Harold Covington

  Cynical, Holocaust, Assassins

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• Throughout human history, countries rise and fall. But not America-we continue to rise and rise, like dough, until Jesus bakes us in the fiery Afterscape of the Rapture.

  Stephen Colbert

  Country, Jesus, Fall

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• Never before in human history has more bad information been available to more people.

  Scott Pelley

  People, Information, Humans

  "Scott Pelley: ‘We’re Getting the Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again’". Scott Pelley's speech at the accepting his Fred Friendly First Amendment award at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Club in New York, www.adweek.com. May 10, 2013.

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• Some day we hope to liberate every man on earth from the tendency as old as human history to identify our strength and manhood with the ability to control the lives, limit the chances, and doom the dreams of women and girls.

  William J. Clinton

  Girl, Dream, Men

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• We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.

  Vernor Vinge

  Space, Understanding, Black

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• How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds

  Carl Sagan

  Other Worlds, Lucky, Firsts

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• We have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the mind, once considered out of reach, is finally assuming center stage.

  Michio Kaku

  Years, Brain, Mind

  Michio Kaku (2014). “The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest To Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind”, p.11, Penguin UK

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• Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

  Vernor Vinge

  Technology, Understanding, World

  Vernor Vinge (2002). “The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge”, p.44, Macmillan

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• Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Atoms, Tasks

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.548, Library of America

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• The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Tasks, Pieces

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.548, Library of America

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• The sustainability revolution will, hopefully, be the third major social and economic turning point in human history, following the Neolithic Revolution - moving from hunter-gathering to farming - and the Industrial Revolution

  Prince Charles

  Moving, Future, Vision

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• It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

  Attitude, Race, Self

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• Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Drama, Writing, Civilization

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• A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, ‘If it’s fair, it is not a true trial!’ That is, without the added presence of some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it with majesty and indescribable valor.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Adversity, Good Friend, Crucifixion Of Christ

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• Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

  Edward Snowden

  Girlfriend, Media, Looks

  "Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions". Q&A, www.theguardian.com. June 17, 2013.

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• Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.

  Vasily Grossman

  Crush, Kindness, Struggle

  "Zbigniew Herbert, Vasily Grossman, and 'a small kernel of human kindness'" by Cynthia Haven, Stanford University blog, bookhaven.stanford.edu. August 2018.

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