Humans Quotes - page 53
Creme states that Mars is bustling with nine billion people; typical Martians would look like smaller-sized humans. Overall, Mars is spiritually on a par with Earth but technologically tremendously superior because they did not make the many "mistakes” humankind did... Creme divides Martians into three categories of spiritual evolution: those who are like gods to us; those of lesser but still remarkable spiritual progress; and those of very low spiritual quality.
Benjamin Creme
Civilisation as a term suggests human agency. [...] It is the way in which people have articulated how and why they wanted to live in communities. It's about how we imagine the perfect community. [...] I think the most ambitious thing humans have ever done is deciding to live together with people whom they didn't know in cities. It's really difficult to build a community, to learn to celebrate difference and to live harmoniously together, and we fail all the time.
Richard Miles (historian)
You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful.
Noam Chomsky
I'm amused that Darwin, at whom I've been taking another look, should say that he also applies the ‘Malthusian' theory to plants and animals, as though in Mr Malthus's case the whole thing didn't lie in its not being applied to plants and animals, but only - with its geometric progression - to humans as against plants and animals. It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions' and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel's Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an ‘intellectual animal kingdom', whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.
Karl Marx
