We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
—Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) English Astronomer
Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
—Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English Novelist, Scriptwriter
It is so much more difficult to live with one’s body than with one’s soul. One’s body is so much more exacting: what it won’t have it won’t have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
I don’t believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
—John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Playwright
Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American Christian Theologian
What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy. Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error: the pride and refuse of the universe.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with the power to drag the soul to perdition.
—Eliza Farnham (1815–64) American Reformer, Writer
Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: “One must not hide that!” Then someone tells you: “The shoulder is on the back.” I’ve never seen women with shoulders on their backs.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.
—Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Prussian German Philosopher, Logician
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say, “I want to see the manager.”
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.
—William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) English Anglican Clergyman, Priest, Mystic
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
—Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet
By association with natures enormities, a man’s heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the ‘Big Man’ described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China’s first romanticists, we ‘live in heaven and earth as our house.’
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen’s skin.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
I have found little that is “good” about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating.
—Marie Stopes (1880–1958) British Author, Social Activist
Why do we spend years using up our bodies to nurture our minds with experience and find our minds turning then to our exhausted bodies for solace?
—Unknown
Man alone, during his brief existence on this earth, is free to examine, to know, to criticize, and to create. In this freedom lies his superiority over the forces that pervade his outward life. He is that unique organism in terms of matter and energy, space and time, which is urged to conscious purpose. Reason is his characteristic and indistinguishing principle. But man is only man—and free—when he considers himself as a total being in whom the unmediated whole of feeling and thought is not severed and who impugns any form of atomization as artificial, mischievous, and predatory.
—Ruth Nanda Anshen (1900–2003) American Philosopher
When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
Leave a Reply