Sapiens Quotes

Each man is his own absolute lawgiver and dispenser of glory or gloom to himself the maker of his life his reward his punishment.

Every man in the world is better than someolne else and not as good as someone else.

Darwinian Man though well-behaved At best is only a monkey shaved!

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility.

This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom - we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.

Man's most valuable trait Is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

Man will ever stand in need of man.

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.

Man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other.

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice but because he has a soul a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

A man is a kind of inverted thermometer the bulb uppermost and the column of self-valuation is all the time going up and down.

A human being isn't an orchid he must draw something from the soil he grows in.

The voice is a second signature.

Man an animal that makes bargains.

We are members one of another.

The Family of Man is more than three billion strong. It lives in more than one hundred nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise or due process of law or the Australian ballot.

The strongest human instinct is to impart information the second strongest is to resist it.

A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics chemistry or animal behaviour.

The cultivated man wise to know and bold to perform is the end to which nature works.

How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist.

Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither ripeness is all.

Men are cruel but man is kind.

Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws and obey them space will treat you kindly. And don't tell me man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Every man is more than just himself he also represents the unique the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect only once in this way and never again.

Man is at the bottom an animal midway a citizen and at the top divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.

I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others.

God made him and therefore let him pass for a man.

Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

We fancy men are individuals so are pumpkins but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.

We should expect the best and the worst from mankind as from the weather.

We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.

Know then thyself presume not God to scan: The proper study of mankind is man.

As a species, wise, harmonious progress is our mission.

To be reborn is a constantly recurring human need.

Man is a wanting animal - as soon as one of his needs is satisfied another appears in its place. This process is unending. It continues from birth to death.

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: 'There is very little difference between one man and another but what there is is very important.'

The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaningless-ness.

Sapiens means wise or sapient... Wise means acceptance, not differentiation. Wise means helping, not fighting. Wise means assimilation, not destruction. Wise means harmony and peace, not dissension.

Few men are of one plain decided colour most are mixed shaded and blended and vary as much from different situations as changeable silks do from different lights.

Together you are a species that grows in all aspects of life – separated you are a mere speck of dust in vast ocean of space-time capable of nothing progressive.

Mankind is an unco squad And muckle he may grieve thee.

Man is an abyss and I turn giddy when I look down into it.

It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.

To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man.

Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist.

I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.

Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.

Man as we know him is a poor creature but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Man is only a reed the weakest thing in nature but he is a thinking reed.

One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.

Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions.

Many people believe they are attracted by God or by Nature when they are only repelled by Man.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.