“The only meaning we might have left as a species--indeed, the only thing left that might matter, that might keep us motivated to get up in the morning--is in the small acts of human kindness we show one another, and in my compulsion to be helpful, useful, to keep things moving forward, I've mostly forgotten to be kind.”
Source: The Last
“Among Norway rats, males ejaculate more sperm when copulating in the presence of male rivals, seemingly because the competition to reproduce persists all the way up the fallopian tube to the surface of the egg. For the same reason, an ape’s testicles are proportionate to the size of the male breeding pool. The male chimpanzee, surrounded by ruthless competition, has reproductive equipment that is truly prodigious, while the gorilla, living with a harem as the only male, has nothing to brag about. The evolutionary reason: A male without rivals needs no special adaptations to increase his odds of becoming a father.
Once again, the social and the physiological cannot be separated any more than we can separate the length from the width of a rectangle.”
Source: Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection
“He has an air of competence that often accompanies people who are in charge of other people.”
Source: Verity
“Cutting edge on the outside, stoneage on the inside, that’s how we spend our life as imitation humans.”
Source: Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World
“For humans, there is ultimately no way out of the obligations and limitations of nature. We are nature. And so, like history, the climate is both something that happens to us and something we make.”
Source: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“Even though speculation is correct only by chance, which means it is wrong at least 50% of the time, nobody remembers and therefore nobody cares. People do not remember yesterday, let alone last week, or last month. Media exists in the eternal now, this minute, this crisis, this talking head, this column, this speculation.”
Source: State of Fear
“I hate violence - you know why, because I'm afraid - terribly afraid – every single minute of my existence - I'm afraid of myself - I'm afraid of my own rage - I'm afraid, that if I raise my hand at someone, there won't be any trace of them left.”
Source: Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live
“... but people often took offense, no matter how gently he tried to explain.”
Source: Honeymoon for One
“God’s original name is Human, but it isn’t very profitable, so the apes cook up fancy names, and sprinkle in tales of magic.”
Source: Sonnets From The Mountaintop
“Most people are robots-executors, not very much unlike animals. They are not even aware of the true motives of their behavior. They make the majority among simples, and among vors, and among outs. On the other hand, there is a minority, robots-rulers, who are aware of themselves, of the motives of their actions, and are able to control them to a certain extent. This is the only real freedom available to people.”
Source: The Outside Intervention