La terre nous en apprend plus sur nous que tous les livres. Parce qu'elle nous résiste. L'homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle.(Terre des hommes)

Our humanity consists in the fact that we do more than survive, that a great part of what we do confers no survival benefit in terms presumably salient from the Pleistocene point of view.

Often, no sooner would the mind begin to scale the heights of Mt. Knowledge than it would receive a frantic call from body base camp, demanding it return to oversee "Operation Masturbate.

We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of my life.

In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane.

Submitting to history allows us to remember our society’s past. Although writing and art express history, it's our humanity which keeps all of us striving for an improved future.

If none of us ever fell short, or put a foot astray, everything would be good in this great world, but we stumble and fall, every one. We must deal with what we have." - Cadfael, Pg. 245-6

Humanity has determined it is supreme in the kingdom of animals, yet [the] beasts live a less tragic existence...and many of their tragedies are a consequence of so-called human brilliance.

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library

The arrogance of the human mind is too fragile, as well as the patience of the human character. It is because of that, they fail to see the power of mere observation and systematic analysis.

And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.

We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human.

What a familiarity with the construction of Turing test bots had begun to show me was that we fail - again and again- to actually be human with other humans, so maddeningly much of the time.

People. Falling for each others’ pretensions, fakeness and whatever various faces they can put on to wear. And then they call it love. What a fantasy. What a blasphemy. Humanity bores me.

But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.