Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we’re all stories of our own narrative.
Visit a typical science classroom and you will discover far more than empirical facts being taught. The dominant worldview among scientific intellectuals is evolutionary naturalism, which holds that humans are essentially biochemical machines.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: ‘Did that matter?’ Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.
The road, lyric-wise, is a trap, and a bore. Maybe it’s interesting to me, but I don’t think it’s a connecting thing with other humans. What is there to write about? Truck stops, hotels, clubs?
Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.
It’s football, you work with humans and humans make mistakes. We will do everything in our power to prepare the players so they know to make the right decision at the right times.
Rescuing women from their burden of unwarranted guilt is going to require ‘educational practices and socializing agents’ even more effective than the ones that have been relentlessly loading female humans with responsibility for other people’s behavior from their earliest childhood.
Humans are contributing to additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
By their very nature, heuristic shortcuts will produce biases, and that is true for both humans and artificial intelligence, but the heuristics of AI are not necessarily the human ones.
Humans are something very different from animals, and the numbers required to get cloning to work in animals are completely prohibitory with humans.
The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.
You shouldn’t say ‘animals’ to distinguish between humans and non-humans. We are all animals.
In terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I don’t think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
By the time I was six, I made an important discovery that I get along much better with animals than humans.
Earth was not built to serve the needs of humans.
I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.
Everywhere in the universe, the periodic table has the same basic structure. Even if an alien civilization’s table weren’t plotted out in the castle-with-turrets shape we humans favor, their spiral or pyramidal or whatever-shaped periodic table would naturally pause after 118 elements.
Communism in Cuba will collapse sooner or later because you can’t control the free flow of information. Communism prevents organizations from developing by stopping the flow of information. The system is based on police and listening devices and triggers the worst characteristics in humans.
President Bush’s proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.
What separates humans from other animals is our empathy. With the possible exception of bonobos, we are the most empathetic animal on the planet.
I’m not a lesbian. I just think that all humans are born with the ability to be attracted to both sexes.
Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I’m optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.
It wasn’t a problem for me drawing humans although I had originally come to the studio with the idea that what I had to offer them was my knowledge in the drawing of animals.
I believe humans have a soul that continues to exist after they die, but I don’t know what form that will take.
Humans and nations are imperfect, and through our collective efforts, we hope to improve our nation and bring hope and opportunity to millions who lack it.
I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we’re humans and not some kind of bird.
I think humans have always wrestled with the Divine Idea – an idea that unites and separates, creates and destroys, consoles and terrifies. Throughout human history, it is an idea that seems sometimes to have caused whole populations to rise up and slaughter one another.
I want it to be the greatest thing I ever do: make good humans.
Language is handy, but we humans have social and emotional connections that transcend words and are communicated – and understood – without conscious thought.
After a natural disaster, safe drinking water is a priority. Humans can live longer without food than water, so communication about clean water is essential to help avoid the risk of cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, famine, and death.
I have this exercise where I force myself to look out from the flower’s point of view at these great walloping humans coming down the path, and try, just try and feel it from their point of view because it’s a different world to them, a fascinating hard one.
I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
If humans evolved in a tiny area of Africa, they only saw plants and animals within a 100-kilometre radius for a million years. When they began to migrate, there would have been different animals and plants – and potentially a lot of allergy issues.
We can build a much brighter future where humans are relieved of menial work using AI capabilities.
The choice that you, as a Soul, have in relation to anything is always to be loving. Do you understand that this is the divine purpose that all of us as humans have been given – to love unconditionally?
Once we have something that is no longer under control, once technological development is yanked out of our hands, it doesn’t have to continue to be beneficial to humans.
Humans have continued to evolve quite a lot over the past ten thousand years, and certainly over 100 thousand. Sure, our biology affects our behavior. But it’s unlikely that humans’ early evolution is deeply relevant to contemporary psychological questions about dating or the willpower to complete a dissertation.
It’s not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it’s extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.
Nobody will leave any place unless they’re forced out. That’s the nature of humans. Once you’re there, you’re there. I’ve never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.
An anthropologist will not excitedly report of a newly discovered tribe: ‘They eat food! They breathe air! They use tools! They tell each other stories!’ We humans forget how alike we are, living in a world that only reminds us of our differences.
People think if you have deciphered the genome of humans that you can change everything. But you cannot change everything, because you do not know what the genes mean, and you have no methods for changing them, and you can’t do experiments with humans like you can with animals.
I am afforded a bit of easy wonderment in relative comfort as to how humans have lasted so long. Climate- and geography-wise, the planet seems to have little use for us.
Language is possible due to a number of cognitive and physical characteristics that are unique to humans but none of which that are unique to language. Coming together they make language possible. But the fundamental building block of language is community.
I think we were colonized by aliens 250,000 years ago, and they genetically altered our DNA to be primates into homo erectus and humans. I’m very interested in how we evolved so suddenly, which obviously ties in with the alien thing.
Humans are ridiculous. We’re all pathetic strivers who will fall short. If you can accept that, it’s optimistic because you can shoot for the moon and know you’re never going to get there, and that’s OK.
‘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.
Humans should always exercise and watch what they eat. So with your pet, make sure they get enough exercise, make sure they’re getting fed at the same time every day and getting the nutrition they need. And make sure they get a lot of love and attention you both need. That’s why you have them!
Typhoon damage happens when they hit land, and as humans, we’ve decided to destroy mangroves and hurt coral reefs. If we don’t have barriers, the devastation is worse, and that is scary.
The one thing humans can’t control is time, but what if one has the power to do so is the core theme of ’24.’
