Whether we like it or not we are animals and should be studied as such. But this doesn’t mean we are the same as other animals. Every species is as unique. Desmond Morris, author The Naked Ape
We learn I think that we are animals ... We have a number of predispositions, behave in certain ways, and that those cultures that have lost sight of the fact that we have certain animal qualities which are not bad qualities ... If we deny those qualities too much then we are in trouble. Desmond Morris, The Parkinson Show
Man is of no importance. Look at what happens when you starve him. He begins to eat his dead companions to stay alive. Man is only interested in his own survival. That is all that counts. All the Spinoza stuff is a lot of rubbish. Felix Dzerzinski, Polish aristocrat
This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism. Gloria Steinem
Anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence all put the origin of modern humans at between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably in Africa. There is also much data that show an outburst of cultural behavior occurring around 50,000-40,000 years ago in Europe. That’s when archaeologists date the oldest evidence of burial ceremonies, body ornaments, and cave paintings. William J Cromie, Facing Up to Modern Man, Harvard Gazette article discussing work of Daniel Lieberman
Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase. Michael Crichton, The Lost World
What’s at the core of all these things that only humans do? The Human Spark I: Becoming US, PBS 2010
The Neanderthals didn’t survive as a species when we arrived. ibid.
One group of descendants stayed behind in Africa, but another group headed north ... the Neanderthals. ibid.
A picture of Neanderthal life that seems strikingly similar to the life of their ancestors in Africa. ibid.
Neanderthal children by contrast seem to have grown up more quickly. ibid.
No beads have ever been found at a Neanderthal site. ibid.
Clues in pigments, in the trading for exotic materials, in sophisticated weaponry, that push the first glimmerings of the human spark back further than anyone ... has ever imagined. ibid.
The chimpanzees are our closest relatives; that they differ from us only by that 1% of DNA. The Human Spark II: So Human, So Chimp
6Welcome to my brain: the product of three and a half billion years of evolution and a few decades of living. It weighs only three pounds but its arguably the most complicated thing in the known universe. The Human Spark III: Brain Matters
Grammar is what makes human language critical to igniting the human spark. ibid.
It takes perhaps ten or fifteen years for the brain to organise itself to process grammar swiftly and efficiently. ibid.
The single most notable thing about the human brain is its sheer size ... Three or four times bigger than a chimp’s brain. ibid.
Insight and imagination both seem to be right at the heart of the human spark. ibid.
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future – and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. Albert Camus
Is love possible? Is freedom possible? Is the truth possible? Is it possible to be one’s actual self with another human being? Is it possible to be a human being any more? Is it possible to be a person? Do persons even exist? R D Laing, psychiatrist
What interests me is the extent to which we are unreliable narrators of ourselves. Gwen Adshead, Broadmoor forensic psychotherapist
People can become disorganised at different times. ibid.
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion’s omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man’s life –
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight –
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems
No great improvements in the lot of mankind until a great change takes place in the constitution of their modes of thought. John Stuart Mill
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But they are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. Richard P Feynman
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travellers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being. Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Ready in Every Child
Why is this important? It’s probably the most important question there is. What does it mean to be a human being? What is our future? Are there other creatures like us? What have they become? What can evolution produce? How far can it go? Dr Frank Drake, founder SETI, interview Dallas Campbell, The Search For Life: The Drake Equation
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being. James Joyce
4,000 year ago: the dawn of European civilisation and the birth of a macabre and brutal ritual. Today, hundreds of prehistoric bodies unearthed from the boglands of northern Europe. 4,000 Year Old Cold Case: The Body in the Bog, BBC 2013
To these farming people the land was sacred. ibid.
Why deposit a body in the peat? ... Murdered then buried in the bogs to appease the gods? ibid.
Could a common theory ever explain them all? ibid.
My preferred subject matter are humans; I’m really interested in them as animals. Lucian Freud, BBC Radio
L S Lowry: a great humanist. To be a humanist, one has first to love human beings, and to be a great humanist, one has to be slightly detached from them. Sheila Fell
I look upon human beings as automatons because they all think they can do what they want but they can’t. They are not free. No-one is. L S Lowry, interview Hugh Maitland
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that; when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4
Human Beings have been around about a hundred thousand years. And for ninety-eight thousand years the mankind God in Heaven has sat around with his arms folded watching human beings die mostly of their teeth ... Two thousand years ago it decides for intervention. Why I am No Longer a Christian
To reduce a human being to ashes takes three hours at 2,500 degrees. Spiral (Engrenages) s2e2 starring Caroline Proust & Gregory Fitoussi & Philippe Duclos & Fred Bianconi & Thierry Godard & Audrey Fleurot et al, pathologist, Canal+ 2006
This was the best. Except for the human element. The Ladykillers 1955 starring Alec Guinness & Peter Sellers & Cecil Parker & Herbert Lom & Danny Green & Jack Warner & Frankie Howerd & Katie Johnson et al, director Alexander Mackendrick, Guinness
To be human is to be complex; you can’t avoid a little ugliness. From within and from without. Star Trek s3e19: Requiem for Methuselah, Kirk to Flint et al