Humans Quotes - page 39
If we decide – and this is our decision; it's not imposed on us from above – if we decide that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is a good ethical principle to live by, then it becomes entirely unjustified and arbitrary to extend this principle to human beings but not also to extend it to other animals capable of suffering. Why should the suffering of nonhumans be less important than that of humans? Surely a universe with less suffering is better than one with more, regardless of whether the locus of suffering is a human being or not, a rational being or not, a member of the moral community or not. Suffering is suffering, and these other variables are morally irrelevant.
Steve Stewart-Williams
Human beings are, by nature, the kind of animal that falls in love. The cross-cultural record also suggests that humans are also the kind of animal that commonly provides biparental care for its young. In 95% to 97% of mammalian species, only the females care for the young. We would no more expect males in these species to invest in their offspring than we would expect them to get pregnant or lactate. Humans are not like that.
Steve Stewart-Williams
As a result of high levels of male parental investment, humans evolved into a somewhat "androgynous” species - a species in which human females exhibit traits generally found only in males (e.g., competition for mates) and human males exhibit traits generally found only in females (e.g., the provision of parental care; choosiness about mates).
Steve Stewart-Williams
The doctrine of human dignity says that humans merit a level of moral concern wholly different from that accorded to mere animals; for this to be true, there would have to be some big, morally significant difference between them. Therefore, any adequate defense of human dignity would require some conception of human beings as radically different from other animals. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory calls into question. It makes us suspicious of any doctrine that sees large gaps of any sort between humans and all other creatures. This being so, a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely.
James Rachels
I feel like for me the lyric writing really comes from just what's going on in my heart and that's what consumes me; think a lot of our heart is relationships. Not just with boyfriend or girlfriend but all your relationships in your life with other people and our interactions with other humans.
Amy Lee
Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.
Jane Goodall
Cultures are relative; morality is absolute. Cultures, as Michael Walzer has argued, are "thick”; they prescribe institutions and behavior patterns to guide humans in the paths which are right in a particular society. Above, beyond, and growing out of this maximalist morality, however, is a "thin” minimalist morality that embodies "reiterated features of particular thick or maximal moralities.”.
Samuel P. Huntington
At least at a basic "thin” morality level, some commonalities exist between Asia and the West. In addition, as many have pointed out, whatever the degree to which they divided humankind, the world's major religions - Western Christianity, Orthodoxy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism - also share key values in common. If humans are ever to develop a universal civilization, it will emerge gradually through the exploration and expansion of these commonalities.
Samuel P. Huntington
Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids - human beings built them, because they're clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.
Gene Roddenberry
