Human Condition Quotes - Page 2

• Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

  Octavio Paz

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Men

  The Labyrinth of Solitude ch. 9 (1950) (translation by Lysander Kemp)

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• It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. The weird thing about telling someone they're dying is it tends to focus their priorities. You find out what matters to them. What they're willing to die for... What they're willing to lie for.

  David Shore

  Lying, What Matters, Focus

  "House: Three Stories". TV Series, www.imdb.com. 2005.

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• People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Practice, Two

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• The human condition comprehends more than the condition under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence.  The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, World, Makers

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• You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Sex, Pain, Memories

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• The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.

  Paul Tillich

  Character, Evil, Creative

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• The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.

  Blaise Pascal

  Fall, Perfect, Reason

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• I've never met a person who does not want a safer world, better medical care and education for their children, and peace with their neighbours. I just don't meet those people. What I meet, over and over again, as I travel around, is that the essential human condition is optimistic - in every one of these places.

  Eric Schmidt

  Children, Optimistic, People

  "The future according to Mr Google". Interview with Alan Rusbridger, www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2013.

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• I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.

  Laura Linney

  People, Different, Matter

  Interview with Matthew Broderick, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 22, 2010.

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• I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

  Maya Angelou

  Talking, Black, Speak

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• It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

  Hugh Laurie

  Lying, House, Variables

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• I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.

  David McCullough

  Art, Military, Technology

  Source: belmontvision.com

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• But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Emotional, Animal

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• I guess I'm interested in the behind-the-surface feelings of the human condition, in my own way. I was always struck by the gap - at least in the books I was reading - between what people tell stories about and what I actually feel. I started thinking about a gap between fantasy and reality.

  Signe Baumane

  Reading, Book, Reality

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• Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.

  Octavio Paz

  Lying, Adventure, Men

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• The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.

  Rajneesh

  Capacity To Love, People, Looks

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• In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.

  Harlan Coben

  Unhappy, Needs, Irony

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• Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.

  Desmond Tutu

  Suffering, Spirituality, Transformation

  Source: www.drfranklipman.com

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• The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.

  Hannah Arendt

  Life, Pain, Effort

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.120, University of Chicago Press

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• Everybody has to share something. This is one of the most important laws of the human condition, is the necessity to share. This is the task of the writer - but not only of a writer, of every human being - it is to share something that he or she has.

  Paulo Coelho

  Law, Important, Tasks

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• Sometime you just need to be silent, have a drink and crack a smile or somethin', because the human condition, in general, is just overwhelming in so many ways.

  Cornel West

  Cracks, Needs, Way

  Interview with Itabari Njeri, articles.latimes.com. October 22, 1995.

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• If you look at the human condition today, not everyone is well fed, has access to good medical care, or the physical basics that provide for a healthy and a happy life.

  Ralph Merkle

  Happy Life, Careers, Healthy

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• I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

  Mandy Patinkin

  Trying, Lucky, Humans

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Hope is what makes the human condition liveable

  Arthur Kleinman

  Humans, Conditions

  Arthur Kleinman (2007). “What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger”, p.45, Oxford University Press

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• There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

  Jodi Picoult

  Want, Reason, Synonym

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #3: Vanishing Acts, The Tenth Circle, and Nineteen Minutes”, p.286, Simon and Schuster

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