Human Condition Quotes - Page 10

• When Goethe says that in every human condition foes lie in wait for us, "invincible only by cheerfulness and equanimity," he does not mean that we can at all times be really cheerful, or at a moment's notice; but that the endeavor to look at the better side of things will produce the habit, and that this habit is the surest safeguard against the danger of sudden evils.

  Leigh Hunt

  Lying, Mean, Evil

  Leigh Hunt (1851). “Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift”, p.37, Smith, Elder

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• Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.

  Steven Rinella

  Art, Hate, Hunting

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• I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Law, Keys

  Steven Pinker (2007). “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”, p.282, Penguin

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• I don't see myself as some kind of lone figure standing out there and doing my work in solitary splendour, but as part of the human condition and part of the continuum of writers.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Kind, Standing Out, Figures

  Source: www.newstatesman.com

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• I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that's what has led us to this place where, as we've developed technology.

  Nick Offerman

  Technology, Thinking, Laziness

  "Nick Offerman on Parks And Recreation and his comically oversized penis". Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. July 18, 2012.

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• Hip-hop is about the human condition; it's about people's lives.

  Immortal Technique

  People, Hip Hop, Hips

  Source: bonuscut.com

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• The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.

  Jean Liedloff

  Order, Views, Long

  Jean Liedloff (1985). “The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully”, p.18, Da Capo Press

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• The world is, was, will always be filled with good and evil, because good and evil is the yin and yang of the human condition.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Evil, Yang, World

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• You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.

  Dan Simmons

  Essence, Aberration, Violence

  Dan Simmons (2009). “Carrion Comfort”, p.266, Macmillan

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• In God becoming human in Jesus Christ, God has established solidarity with the human condition.

  William A. Dembski

  Jesus, Becoming, Christ

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• The older I grow, the more I realize how unfit we are for relationships. We are all such antagonists. It's part of the human condition to be deeply unfaithful to constancy. I do believe that.

  Vivian Gornick

  Believe, Unfaithful, Realizing

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I'm just looking for characters that continue to make me stretch and grow and learn more about the human condition.

  Forest Whitaker

  Character, Grows, Humans

  "Forest Whitaker shares wit, wisdom in discussing latest film". Interview with Kam Williams, www.baystatebanner.com. February 27, 2014.

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• I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

  Alison Hawthorne Deming

  Thinking, Way, Contradiction

  Nashville Review Interview, as.vanderbilt.edu. December 1, 2012.

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• The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though.

  Robert Dessaix

  Use, Way, Odyssey

  Source: www.compulsivereader.com

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• I am really fascinated by self-sabotage. I think that there's not a person I know who doesn't fall victim to it. It's essential to the human condition, and relatable.

  Kit Williamson

  Fall, Thinking, Self

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition.

  Arthur Koestler

  Space, Machines, Ships

  1953 'The Boredomof Fantasy', collected in The Trail of the Dinosaur (1955), pt.2.

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• What is Hope?Hope is that inner dynamic that compels us to explore and pursue the expectations built into the human condition. Hope was born the day the first human beings discovered the first bridge and decided not to jump off the bridge in despair, but to cross it

  Henri Nouwen

  Bridges, Expectations, Despair

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• Yet again, an ancient answer echoes across the centuries: Listen! Listen to stories! For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-upped-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another's story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy-and therefore our very human-ness, the ambiguity and incongruity, that lie at the core of the human condition.

  Ernest Kurtz

  Lying, Echoes, Mirrors

  Ernest Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham (2009). “The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning”, p.63, Bantam

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• I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into.

  Jonathan Frakes

  Baseball, Writing, Literature

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• Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things.

  Rene Dubos

  Adventure, Character, Unique

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• The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe. I fervently hope that my pursuit, as a Japanese, of literature and culture will, in some small measure, repay Western Europe for the light it has shed upon the human condition.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Light, Europe, Soul

  Speech at the Nobel Banquet, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1994.

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• It's (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.

  Edward Hopper

  Loneliness, Communication, Reflection

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• If we can sympathise only with the utterly blameless, then we can sympathise with no one, for all of us have contributed to our own misfortunes - it is a consequence of the human condition that we should. But it does nobody any favours to disguise from him the origins of his misfortunes, and pretend that they are all external to him in circumstances in which they are not.

  Anthony Daniels

  Doe, Favour, Should

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• What interests me is love, sex, death, cruelty, compassion and the desire for meaning in an apparently godless universe. In other words the human condition.

  Glen Duncan

  Sex, Compassion, Desire

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• Moreover, the human condition, if that is what it is, has been getting steadily worse in the Corporate State; more and more life-denying just as life should be opening up.

  Charles A. Reich

  Opening Up, States, Should

  Charles A. Reich (1970). “The Greening of America”

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