Homo Sapiens Quotes

• When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Communication, Trying, Communicate

  Nikki Giovanni (1994). “Racism 101”, William Morrow & Co

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• Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Passion, Humility, Atheism

  "Invented symbols". www.nytimes.com. January 05, 2006.

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• Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Crazy, Animal, Doe

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• It took nature 100 million years to make the ape stand up and become Homo sapiens. It took us only 10,000 to make knowing obsolete.

  Sugata Mitra

  Years, Knowing, Apes

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• The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Mean, Race, Dwelling

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• The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and spirit of his children should never escape, Homo Sapiens has employed praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, mutilation, and even torture to chain them to the culture pattern.

  Jules Henry

  Children, Freedom, Men

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• A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens-second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.

  Reynolds Price

  Home, Opposites, Silence

  Reynolds Price (1989). “A common room: essays, 1954-1987”, Scribner Paper Fiction

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• Ah, but is it not the mind that is the real grace of Homo sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit!

  Carol Emshwiller

  Art, Real, Thinking

  Carol Emshwiller (2013). “Carmen Dog”, p.92, Small Beer Press

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• there are two types of the male species of Homo sapiens: men, and Italian men.

  Letitia Baldrige

  Italian, Men, Two

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• What is human and the same about the males and females classified as Homo sapiens is much greater than the differences.

  Estelle Ramey

  Differences, Males, Female

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• The origin of Homo sapiens, as a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree, lies well below the boundary.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tree, Branches, Tiny

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• Alone among all creatures, the species that styles itself wise, Homo sapiens, has an abiding interest in its distant origins, knows that its allotted time is short, worries about the future and wonders about the past.

  John Noble Wilford

  Wise, Past, Worry

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• When you think about what Homo sapiens are about, you almost feel that we are replacing ourselves. We won't be able to breathe and breed on this earth, so we replace ourselves with androids that can do. The androids can go up into space and take the future of humanity forward because maybe we just bow out with a carbon-based epoch.

  Irvine Welsh

  Thinking, Space, Humanity

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I will always admit immediately to what’s obvious, which is that homo sapiens is inherently erotic or sensual from birth.

  Jock Sturges

  Erotic, Sensual, Birth

  Interview with David Steinberg, www.nearbycafe.com. May 25, 1994.

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• But the truth is that Homo sapiens is a sensual species. I think all species are, to one degree or another.

  Jock Sturges

  Artist, Thinking, Sensual

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• In the end I came to see that the true prophet of the modern world was Samuel Butler: when he suggested that the machine was an evolutionary development, destined to supersede man as the dominant species and reduce him to greenfly status, the status of machine-minder, homo mechanicus instead of homo sapiens; and to modify his nature accordingly.

  Robert Aickman

  Men, World, Machines

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• Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

  Henri Bergson

  Doubt, Atheism, Reason

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• My single greatest challenge is to remain centered and loving in an overwhelmingly nonvegan world. In today's world, cruelty and exploitation of other beings - human and non-human alike - are accepted, practiced, and profited from by most every institution of society - from commerce and science to education and entertainment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Homo sapiens are either unaware of the cruelty or accept it as unavoidable and even normal.

  Michael Klaper

  Challenges, Majority, World

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• What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?

  Richard Wilbur

  Pride, Doors, Heaven

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• Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

  P. D. James

  Eye, Mass Extinction, Light

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.24, Vintage

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• We became Homo sapiens not that long ago, from the scientific perspective, and we've retained a lot of our beast nature. We've done all these amazing things in terms of our knowledge base and technology, and now we're flying around and using the internet. But we're still very animalistic. So, I think about hierarchies. I think about evolution. I think about how we stack up, how we sit on top of each other. How we pray that we know what we're up to.

  Wangechi Mutu

  Technology, Thinking, Long Ago

  "A Fantastic Journey Into the Mind of Collage Artist Wangechi Mutu". Interview with Benjy Hansen-Bundy, www.motherjones.com. October 12, 2013.

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• My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

  Aldo Leopold

  Animal, Land, Water

  "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There". Book by Aldo Leopold. Chapter "The Land Ethic", p. 203-204, 1949.

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• If I had my life to live over again I would not devote it to develop new industrial processes: I would try to add my humble efforts to use Science to the betterment of the human race. I despair of the helter-skelter methods of our vaulted homo sapiens, misguided by his ignorance and his politicians. If we continue our ways, there is every possibility that the human race may follow the road of former living races of animals whose fossils proclaim that they were not fit to continue. Religion, laws and morals is not enough. We need more. Science can help us.

  Leo Baekeland

  Ignorance, Humility, Humble

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• There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Humorous, Sarcasm, Race

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.1779, Delphi Classics

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• The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Religious, Prayer, Real

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