Human

For other uses, see Human (disambiguation).

Humans (Homo sapiens) also known as people are apes. They are the extant members of the tribe Hominina, and together with chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, they are also part of the family Hominidae (also known as the hominids and great apes). Humans are terrestrial animals, characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other primates; and highly advanced and organized societies.

• Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
  • Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See (1990).

• Capable of creating beauty, he yet seems content to dwell mostly in conditions of hopeless ugliness. Of his magnificent body he makes on the whole a travesty. His mind, as an actual potent instrument, he usually ignores altogether.
  • Vera Stanley Alder in The Fifth Dimension and the Future of Mankind (1940)

• It is as one humanity, chastened, disciplined but illumined and fused, that we must emerge into the future.
  • Alice Bailey, The Destiny of Nations (1949), p. 65

• Our species is prone to a flattering view of itself. Humans have regarded themselves as the pinnacle of creation, formed by and in the image of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, and inhabiting a planet at the center of the universe—a planet around which all others revolve. Science has done much to debunk some of these ideas. We now know that our planet is not at the center of the universe: the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. And we know—or at least some of us do—that we are Johnny-come-lately products of a long, blind evolutionary process.
  • David Benatar, The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism (2015), p. 35-36

• Just one among millions of animal species – many on the brink of extinction and numerous yet to be discovered – Homo sapiens has risen from humble mammalian origins millions of years ago to become the most dominant, violent, predatory, and destructive animal on the planet. In a journey without precedent, Homo sapiens evolved from vulnerable prey to apex predator, from threatened species to threatening species, from pockets of Africa to planetary domination.
  • Steven Best, "Failed Species: The Rise and Fall of the Human Empire". Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity. 9 (2). (2021).

• I judge people by what they might be, — not are, nor will be.
  • Robert Browning, A Soul’s Tragedy, Act II.

• A person's lifeworm is a tangle of atomic worldlines. A braid. The dotty little atoms trace out smooth lines in spacetime: you are the pattern that these lines make up. There is no one single atom that is exclusively yours. I breathe an atom out, you breathe it in. Your garbage helps my tomatoes grow. And so the little spacetime threads weave us all together. The human race is a single vast tapestry, linked by our shared food and air. There are larger links as well: sperm, egg and umblilicus. Each family tree is an organic whole. Your spacetime body tapers back to the threads of mother's egg and father's sperm. And children, if you have them, are forever rooted in your flesh.
  • Rudy Rucker in The Sex Sphere, p. 108.

• As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life.
  • Rachel Carson, Speech (1954), in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998)

• Measured against the vast backdrop of geologic time, the whole era of man seems but a moment—but how portentous a moment!
  • Rachel Carson, Speech at Scripps College (June 1962), in Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment (2018)

• Who could have foretold that this being, who walked upright and no longer lived in trees, who lurked in caves, hiding in fear from the great beasts who shared his world—who could have guessed that he would one day have in his hands the power to change the very nature of the earth—the of life and death over so many of its creatures? Who could have foretold that the brain that was developing behind those heavy brow ridges would allow him to accomplish things no other creature had achieved-but would not at the same time endow him with wisdom so to control his activities that he would not bring destruction upon himself?
  • Rachel Carson Speech at Scripps College (June 1962) In Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment

• Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.
  From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), 2270

• Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.
  • Edith Cavell, as quoted in The Economist (15 October 2010), p. 107.

• If one denies human life its absolute, transcendental character, the human person loses his inalienable worthiness and his inviolable rights. Then society determines what rights are to be bestowed on a person, and the State becomes absolute lord and master.
  • Thierry Dejond, S. J., "Contraception", “Contraception”, This article originally was printed by Emmaus under the title "Contraception: a social problem.", Eternal Word Television Network, 1996

• Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.
  • Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949), Monthly Review [1] New York (May 1949)

• A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
  • Albert Einstein Condolence letter to Norman Salit, 4 March 1950. Quoted in The Einstein Papers. A Man of Many Parts, 29 March 1972, The New York Times

• If humanity was wiped out today, the Earth would return to a paradise in a few hundred years. If we lose bees, we’re a desert, forever. We’re not that important. We’re just one species of narcissistic ape. And some people on social media get annoyed when I say we’re apes. You know, religious types, Americans.
  • Ricky Gervais, Ricky Gervais: Armageddon (transcript). December 2023.

• O wearisome condition of humanity!
  Born under one law, to another bound;
  Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;
  Created sick, commanded to be sound.
  • Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, Mustapha (1609), Act II, scene 2

• All right. It's instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill - today!
  • Captain Captain James T. Kirk, as interpreted by William Shatner, in "A Taste of Armageddon", Star Trek, story by Robert Hamner; teleplay by Gene L. Coon & Robert Hamner; (February 23, 1967)

• The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
  • Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955), Section 124.

• It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. ... The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.
  • Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 11: Brotherhood.

• Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
  • Book of Job, 14:1 (KJV)

• With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”
  • John the Evangelist, Revelation, 21:3-4 (NWT)

• Human life is sacred... From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.
  • Pope John XXIII, "Mater et Magistra", Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 53 (1961), 447 [TPS VII, 331].

• Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
  • Immanuel Kant, Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6.

• Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
  • Stephen King, The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition (1990), 3rd paragraph of Chapter 42, Glen Bateman speaking.

• Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.
  • Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace (2003)

• Society is composed only of various conditions, professions, functions, and ways of life, among those who form what we call a Nation; of proprietors of the soil, and proprietors of houses; of investments, of handicrafts, of merchants, of manufacturers, of formers; of day-laborers becoming fanners, manufacturers, merchants, or possessors of houses or capital, in their turn; of the rich, of those in easy circumstances, of the poor, of workmen with their hands, workmen with their minds; of day-laborers, of those in need, of a small number of men enjoying considerable acquired or inherited wealth, of others of a smaller fortune painfully increased and improved, of others with property only sufficient for their needs; there are some, finally, without any personal possession but their hands, and gleaning for themselves and for their families, in the workshop, or the field, and at the threshold of the homes of others on the earth, the asylum, the wages, the bread, the instruction, the tools, the daily pay, all those means of existence which they have neither inherited, saved, nor acquired. These last are what have been improperly called the People.
  • Alphonse de Lamartine, Atheism Among the People, (1850) p. 19-20.

• You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.
  • Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

• Every human heart is human.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Introduction, line 91.

• Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
  Hev one glory an' one shame;
  Ev'ythin' thet's done inhuman
  Injers all on 'em the same.
  • James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers (1848), First Series. No. 1, Stanza 10.

• Man is not just another animal. Our species possesses something unique, a privilege that distinguishes us from all other life forms: Reason. It is so because of Reason that we have been able to make extraordinary discoveries, such as mathematics and rigorous logic, which have enabled us to understand the universe and our place in it.Evolutionists tell us that we are just another animal species, but they forget that we are the only ones capable of building a collective memory, such as writing, and transmitting knowledge through the centuries. Other species have not left traces of themselves as we have.This privilege allowed us not to be children of chaos, but of an extraordinary logical structure that we still try to understand today. Evolutionism ignores the extraordinary uniqueness of our species, which cannot be reduced to simple formulas.
  • Antonino Zichichi, Official Facebook profile (in Italian; September 25, 2024)

• O mankind! If ye are in doubt concerning the Resurrection, then lo! We have created you from dust, then from a drop of seed, then from a clot, then from a little lump of flesh shapely and shapeless, that We may make (it) clear for you. And We cause what We will to remain in the wombs for an appointed time, and afterward We bring you forth as infants, then (give you growth) that ye attain your full strength. And among you there is he who dieth (young), and among you there is he who is brought back to the most abject time of life, so that, after knowledge, he knoweth naught.
  • Muhammad, Quran, 22, 5, as translated by, as translated by Marmaduke Pickthall (1930)

• Man is (self-) destroyed: bow ungrateful!
  From what thing doth He create him?
  From a drop of seed. He createth him and proportioneth him,
  Then maketh the way easy for him,
  Then causeth him to die, and burieth him;
  Then, when He will, He bringeth him again to life.
  Nay, but (man) hath not done what He commanded him.
  • Muhammad, Quran, 80, 17–23, as translated by, as translated by Marmaduke Pickthall (1930)

• Lo! man is in a state of loss.
  • Muhammad, Quran, 103, 2, as translated by Marmaduke Pickthall (1930)

• If one of your people
  equals hundreds of ours,
  what does that say about people?
  • Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

• Most people aren’t as interesting as they think they are.
  • Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Safety Tests, from the e-book edition of Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, and published by Solaris ISBN 978-1-84997-460-8

• Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Science to Save Us from Science, 19 March 1950, The New York Times.

• "I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through." This sentence, the noblest ever spoken, this sentence that defines man's place in the universe, that honors him, that re-establishes the true hierarchy, floated back into my thoughts.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer. Wind, Sand and Stars

• The people will live on.
  The learning and blundering people will live on.
  • Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes (1936).

• Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
  • Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
    • Arthur Schopenhauer On The Freedom Of The Will (1839), as translated in The Philosophy of American History : The Historical Field Theory (1945) by Morris Zucker, p. 531
  • Variant translations:
    • Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.
      • As quoted in The Motivated Brain : A Neurophysiological Analysis of Human Behavior (1991) by Pavel Vasilʹevich Simonov, p. 198.

• I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.
  • Rod Serling, Speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California, (3 December 1968)

• Every man’s death does diminish us. And it follows that every man’s poverty, every man’s indignity, every man’s frustration and hopelessness – they are a part of mankind.
  • Rod Serling, “The Commencement Address of Rod Serling”, Ithaca College, New York, (May 13, 1972), p. 4

• What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, scene 2

• First Murderer: We are men, my liege.
  Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
  As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
  Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
  All by the name of dogs: the valu’d file
  Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
  The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
  According to the gift which bounteous nature
  Hath in him clos’d; whereby he does receive
  Particular addition, from the bill
  That writes them all alike: and so of men.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth, III, i

• What is brighter than the sun? Yet it disappears. Man is no more than flesh and blood, yet he thinks of doing evil. While the sun surveys the stars in the lofty sky, human beings remain dust and ashes.
  • Book of Sirach, 17:31-32 (NRSV)

• A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.
  • Agent K, interpreted by Tommy Lee Jones, in the film Men in Black (1997), written by Ed Solomon.

• Many the forms of life,
  Wondrous and strange to see,
  But nought than man appears
  More wondrous and more strange.
  • Sophocles, Antigone, Second Chorus, strophe 1, as translated by Edward Plumptre (1865)

• Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) The Sage, the Weak, and the Magnificent, p. 95.

• Were I (who to my cost already am
  One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
  A spirit free to choose, for my own share
  What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
  I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
  Or anything but that vain animal,
  Who is so proud of being rational.
  • The Earl of Rochester, "A Satyr against Reason and Mankind" (1679)

• I have learned
  To look on nature, not as in the hour
  Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
  The still, sad music of humanity,
  Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
  To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
  A presence that disturbs me with the joy
  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
  Of something far more deeply interfused,
  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
  And the round ocean and the living air,
  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
  A motion and a spirit, that impels
  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
  And rolls through all things.
  • William Wordsworth, in Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798).

• We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
  • Malcolm X; variant of Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter, (1970)

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 380.

• Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity;
  These are its sign and note and character.
  • Robert Browning, Paracelsus, scene 3.

• W'en you see a man in woe,
  Walk right up and say "hullo."
  Say "hullo" and "how d'ye do,"
  "How's the world a-usin' you?"
  . . . . .
  W'en you travel through the strange
  Country t'other side the range,
  Then the souls you've cheered will know
  Who you be, an' say "hullo."
  • Sam Walter Foss, Hullo.

• He held his seat; a friend to human race.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book VI, line 18. Pope's translation.

• Respect us, human, and relieve us, poor.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book IX, line 338. Pope's translation.

• Over the brink of it
  Picture it—think of it,
  Dissolute man.
  Lave in it—drink of it
  Then, if you can.
  • Thomas Hood, Bridge of Sighs.

• Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
  And flesh and blood so cheap!
  • Thomas Hood, Song of a Shirt.

• For He, who gave this vast machine to roll,
  Breathed Life in them, in us a Reasoning Soul;
  That kindred feelings might our state improve,
  And mutual wants conduct to mutual love.
  • Juvenal, Satire XV, line 203.

• It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Warren Hastings.

• For nothing human foreign was to him.
  • James Thomson, To the Memory of Lord Talbot, translation of "Humani nihil a me alienum puto".

• For the interesting and inspiring thing about America, gentlemen, is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.
  • Woodrow Wilson, speech at the luncheon of the Mayor of New York, May 17, 1915.

• Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
  • William Wordsworth, Hart-leap Well, Part II.

Quotes reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

• There are people in our society who should be separated and discarded. I think it's one of the tendencies of the liberal community to feel that every person in a nation of over 200 million people can be made into a productive citizen.
  I'm realist enough to believe this can't be. We're always going to have our prisons, we're always going to have our places of preventive detention for psychopaths, and we're always going to have a certain number of people in our community who have no desire to achieve or who have no desire to even fit in an amicable way with the rest of society.
  And these people should be separated from the community, not in a callous way but they should be separated as far as any idea that their opinions shall have any effect on the course we follow.
  • Spiro T. Agnew, comments during interview for European audiences which was recorded in Washington, D.C., then broadcast over British Independent Television on June 30, 1970, as reported by The Washington Post, July 2, 1970, p. A3.

• Where there is no vision, the people perish.
  • The Bible, Proverbs 29:18.

• I can not wish you success in your effort to reject the treaty because while it may win the fight it may destroy our cause. My plan cannot fail if the people are with us and we ought not to succeed unless we do have the people with us.
  • William Jennings Bryan, letter to Andrew Carnegie, January 13, 1899. Bryan papers, Library of Congress. Andrew Carnegie, working to defeat the treaty of peace with Spain, unsuccessfully sought Bryan's help.

• I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people"—that was his message.
  • Winston Churchill, speech to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., December 26, 1941. Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, ed. Robert Rhodes James, vol. 6, p. 6536 (1974).

• Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast!
  • Attributed to Alexander Hamilton, in a political argument with Thomas Jefferson. David S. Muzzey, An American History, p. 192 (1911). For similar expressions of this idea going back to Horace, see Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., p. 108, no. 19 and footnotes (1982), and The Home Book of Quotations, ed. Burton Stevenson, 9th ed., p. 1483–84, section 7 (1964).

• Would yee both eat your cake, and have your cake?
  • John Heywood, The Proverbs of John Heywood, part 2, chapter 9, p. 162 (1598, reprinted 1874, 1978). The idea that if you spend a thing you cannot have it goes back much further than Heywood's original 1546 work. Plautus wrote c. 194 B.C. in Trinummus (act II, scene iv, line 414), "Non tibi illud apparere si sumas potest" (if you spend a thing you cannot have it), translated as "You cannot eat your cake and have it too" by one Englishman. Comedies of Plautus, trans. Bonnell Thornton, 2d ed., rev., vol. 2, p. 29 (1769).

• People don't eat in the long run—they eat every day.
  • Attributed to Harry L. Hopkins, who headed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in 1933. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, p. 52 (1948).

• The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, query 19, reprinted in Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2 (1903), p. 230.

• A sense of this necessity, and a submission to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price (January 8, 1789); in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1958), vol. 14, p. 420.

• The President to-night has a dream:—He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said:—"He is a very common-looking man". The President replied:—"The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them".
  • Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, December 23, 1863. John Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, vol. 1, p. 142–43 (1908, reprinted 1969).

• No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it…. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.
  • David Lloyd George, address, conference of trade union delegates, London, January 18, 1918, as reported by The Times (London), January 19, 1918, p. 8.

• I do not want the voice of the people shut out.
  • Huey Long, remarks in the Senate, May 16, 1932, Congressional Record, vol. 75, p. 10297.

• Your country is calling you. Our people are calling us. The people of America are calling us to relieve them from the distress that has infested this entire Nation as the result of following the Cabinet officers of the present administration. Your people are asking you to deliver them from this condition that now exists. They are asking relief.
  • Huey Long, remarks in the Senate, May 16, 1932, Congressional Record, vol. 75, p. 10307.

• If I were to attempt to put my political philosophy tonight into a single phrase, it would be this: Trust the people. Trust their good sense, their decency, their fortitude, their faith. Trust them with the facts. Trust them with the great decisions. And fix as our guiding star the passion to create a society where people can fulfill their own best selves—where no American is held down by race or color, by worldly condition or social status, from gaining what his character earns him as an American citizen, as a human being and as a child of God.
  • Adlai Stevenson, speech at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 13, 1956. Stevenson, The New America, ed. Seymour E. Harris, Jr., p. 13–14 (1971).

• We human beings constitute and reconstitute ourselves through cultural traditions, which we experience as our own development in a historical time that spans the generations. To investigate the life-world as horizon and ground of all experience therefore requires investigating none other than generativity - the processes of becoming, of making and remaking, that occur over the generations and within which any individual genesis is always already situated... Individual subjectivity is intersubjectively and culturally embodied, embedded, and emergent.
  • Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press, 2010. p. 36

• No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.
  • George Washington, first inaugural address, April 30, 1789. The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 30, p. 293 (1939).

• People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business.
  • Walter E. Washington, mayor of Washington, D.C., c. 1971.

• In the last analysis, my fellow countrymen, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.
  • Woodrow Wilson, address, Columbus, Ohio, September 4, 1919. The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Albert Shaw, vol. 2, p. 728 (1924).

• Evolution
• Human behavior
• Human genome
• Human nature
• Human rights
• Human sexual activity
• Mutant
• Transhumanism