Human History Quotes - Page 2

• One person can make all the difference in the world. For the first time in recorded human history, we have the fate of the whole planet in our hands.

  Chrissie Hynde

  Fate, Hands, Differences

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• Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.

  Erich Fromm

  Freedom, Men, Liberty

  "Psychoanalysis and Religion".

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• We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power.

  Joseph Sobran

  People, Liberty, Facts

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• The six thousand years of human history form but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond.

  Hugh Miller

  Science, Years, Yesterday

  Hugh Miller (1857). “An Autobiography: My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education”, p.441

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• [Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.

  John Burroughs

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

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• We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.

  Carl Sagan

  Taken, Hands, Firsts

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.47, Ballantine Books

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• The dignity of the human person is a transcendent value, always recognized as such by those who sincerely search for the truth. Indeed, the whole of human history should be interpreted in the light of this certainty. Every person, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:26 28), is therefore radically oriented towards the Creator, and is constantly in relationship with those possessed of the same dignity. To promote the good of the individual is thus to serve the common good, which is that point where rights and duties converge and reinforce one another.

  Pope John Paul II

  Rights, Light, Cfs

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• "Are we alone in the universe?" This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science.

  Paul Davies

  Philosophy, Years, Dawn

  Source: bigthink.com

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• There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

  Karl Marx

  Blow, Historical, Firsts

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin (1986). “India, National Liberation and Class Struggles: A Collection of Classical Marxist Writings”

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• The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Animal, Doubt, Machines

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• The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.'

  Dennis Prager

  Country, Men, Impact

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• In fact, there are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in human history, with an estimated 27 million in bondage across the globe.

  Jen Lilley

  World, Today, Facts

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• But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Russia, Government

  "Christendom in Dublin". Book by G. K. Chesterton, Ch. III: Very Christian Democracy., 1932.

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• You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history.

  Bill McKibben

  Change, Morning, Work

  "The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium" by Bill McKibben, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 5, 2011.

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• We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

  Ayn Rand

  Gun, Government, Historical

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.320, Penguin

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• The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human history and cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Philosophy, Real

  1975 Humboldt's Gift.

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• ...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.

  Alan Watts

  Years, White, Black

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.37, Souvenir Press

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• We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid.

  Noam Chomsky

  Smart, Stupid, Entering

  Noam Chomsky (2007). “Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance”, p.1, Macmillan

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• By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.

  Carl Sagan

  Fate, Thinking, Other Worlds

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?", 1990.

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• The United States of America was the first place on earth where average people had the opportunity to become the greatest among all people. It was the first time in human history where people were allowed to pursue the best of their abilities to whatever desire they wanted, because it was a nation founded under the concept of human beings being born free.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Opportunity, America, Average

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Football is the most successful cult, in terms of members and profits, in human history. Oh wait, there's also religion.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Successful, Waiting

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation. It's been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.

  Adrienne Rich

  People, Magic, Culture

  Source: www.paulodacosta.ca

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• Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.

  Margaret Atwood

  America, Giving, Optimism

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Selfishness, Looks, Human Nature

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• One of the great famines in human history took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. [At the same time] Western journalists were reporting how marvelously Chinese society was working. We know so little [about what happens in China].

  George Friedman

  Chinese, Littles, Revolution

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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