What It Means To Be Human Quotes

• To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Nature, Mean, Science

  Terry Tempest Williams (2008). “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert”, p.75, Vintage

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• What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation.

  Nicole Krauss

  Healing, Mean, Literature

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• The development of willpower -I will, I won't and I want- may define what it means to be human.

  Kelly McGonigal

  Mean, Development, May

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• You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Graduation, Mean

  "These Great Commencement Speeches Will Change How You Look at Success and Failure" by Matt Miller, www.esquire.com. May 5, 2017.

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• Art has a way of confronting us, of reminding us, of engaging us, in what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be flawed, is to be contradictory, is to be often weak, and yet despite all of these what we would consider drawbacks, that we're also quite beautiful. Spin is the opposite.

  Junot Diaz

  Beautiful, Art, Mean

  "Author Explains Tales Of New Vision, New Life". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 10, 2009.

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• Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.

  Henri Nouwen

  Mean, Waiting, Identity

  Henri Nouwen (2013). “Reaching Out”, p.35, Image

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• If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what grief is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you’re not just a spectator, but you’re actually part of the drama which has him as the central character.

  N. T. Wright

  Jesus, Drama, Grief

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• The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.

  John Naisbitt

  Mean, Technology, Century

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• The moon is a loyal companion.
  It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.
  Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Strong, Mean, Dark

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• The most exciting part of finding out who we are is discovering our own uniqueness, who we are outside the box, beyond the categories in a Psychology 101 textbook. In our inimitable singularity, there is an infinite range of possibility that cannot be tied to any one description of what it means to be human or healthy.

  David Richo

  Mean, Psychology, Healthy

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• I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Dark, Light

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• I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are yours. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human.

  Frederick Buechner

  Mean, Trusting Each Other, Secret

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• You've certainly mellowed out... you used to be fun, full of life and emotion. Lust, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, and Pride. Of course, excessive want will destroy anyone, but those same desires are necessary to understand what it means to be human. Why did you rid yourself of them?

  Hiromu Arakawa

  Fun, Mean, Pride

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• We tend to think of dangers and uncertainties as anomalies in the continuum of life, or irruptions of unpredictable forces into a largely predictable world. I suggest the contrary: that dangers and uncertainties are an inescapable dimension of life. In fact, as we shall come to understand, they make life matter. They define what it means to be human.

  Arthur Kleinman

  Mean, Thinking, Anomalies

  Arthur Kleinman (2007). “What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger”, p.1, Oxford University Press

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• Science, is the creation by humans of a particular paradigm and methodology for discovering truth and understanding reality. Hence it can never fully reflect the hidden face of humanity, its creator, in the same sense that a computer can never become fully human or know what it means to be human: however sophisticated, these machines will forever remain mere artifacts of humanity.

  Stephen A. Diamond

  Mean, Reality, Forever

  Stephen A. Diamond (1996). “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity”, p.179, SUNY Press

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• What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Children, Mean

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• Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society - Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.

  Rollo May

  Mean, Leader, Lines

  "Marriage Today : Problems, Issues, and Alternatives". Book by James E. De Burger, p. 444, 1977.

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• Art and culture are nonetheless vital, essential even, to what it means to be human, yet digital abundance has diminished our sense of their worth.

  Astra Taylor

  Art, Mean, Essentials

  Astra Taylor (2014). “The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age”, p.132, Macmillan

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• If you knew the immensity of what it means to be human, you would not talk about God or Heaven.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Spiritual, Mean, Heaven

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• How does contemporary technology and culture changes our understanding of what it means to be human. What is our relationship with - and responsibilities towards - that which we create.

  Patricia Piccinini

  Mean, Responsibility, Technology

  The Condition report Interview, www.patriciapiccinini.net. 2014.

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• Some tropes are universal. Boy meets girl. Betrayal and revenge. The search to discover a hidden truth.... A mother's love isn't cliché, it's universal. These things are archetypes. They're the building blocks of myth and legend. They are a big part about what it means to be human.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Girl, Mother, Revenge

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• I feel most people’s sexuality is enormously complicated. That’s what it means to be human. Wouldn’t it be great if we honored that complexity rather than turn it into gossip or ridicule? Wouldn’t it be great if we accepted sexual diversity, in ourselves and others, without condemning it?

  Janet Jackson

  Mean, People, Diversity

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• Running is the heart of what it means to be human.

  Christopher McDougall

  Running, Heart, Mean

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• Our species is on the verge of changes that will fundamentally alter what it means to be human... and we are the people driving that change.

  Daniel Keys Moran

  Mean, People, Driving

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• I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves and others, and I would like the reader to feel that we are all, more or less, in a similar state as we love and disappoint one another, and that we try, most of us, as best we can, and that to fail and succeed is what we do.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Mean, Judging, Understanding

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

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