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Conditions Quotes

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“I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.”

“People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.”

“As we enter our centennial year we are still a young nation, very much in the formative stages. Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit.”

“Religion and science, for example, are often though to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, physics, but many were good psychologists.”

“We have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things. So it made sense to me to reflect the human condition that not every action has an explanation. We act, and then later maybe come to an understanding about it, or maybe not.”

“The flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by actors, and these unintended consequences also may form unacknowledged conditions of actions in a feedback fashion. Human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project; it persistently eludes efforts to bring it under conscious direction.”

“The real debate about both the horrific inequality in the world and about the terrorism and frightening instability in the world requires analysis of the differences in upset-adaption or alienation-from-soul between individuals, races, genders, generations, countries, civilisations and cultures, but until the human condition could be explained and the upset state of the human condition compassionately understood and thus defended that debate could not take place.”

“The great multinationals are unwilling to face the moral and economic contradictions of their own behavior - producing in low-wage dictatorships and selling to high-wage democracies. Indeed, the striking quality about global enterprises is how easily free-market capitalism puts aside its supposed values in order to do business. The conditions of human freedom do not matter to them so long as the market demand is robust. The absence of freedom, if anything, lends order and efficiency to their operations.”

“Yet again, an ancient answer echoes across the centuries: Listen! Listen to stories! For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-upped-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another's story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy-and therefore our very human-ness, the ambiguity and incongruity, that lie at the core of the human condition.”

“Sometimes I can inhabit a feisty, vicious character. Sometimes I can inhabit a painfully shy British girl, or whatever it might be. I'm able to step into these other parts of myself. I feel like, as long as I keep doing that in my career, and I keep tapping into different parts of the human condition, that's all I ask for.”

“The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station; and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors.”

“Actually, if you go back to what Marx said in The Communist Manifesto over a hundred years ago, when in talking about the constant revolutions in technology, he ended that paragraph by saying, "All that is sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air, and men and women are forced to face with sober senses our conditions of life and our relations with our kind." We're at that sort of turning point in human history.”

“Autobiography is the most fascinating thing you can do because you get to touch the human condition. And in the end, what else is there? To me, it's the ultimate affirmation of life, and a miracle of this transient, extremely fragile organism. To celebrate that, I think, is a noble thing to do.”

“I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital.”

“It's a joyful, humbling feeling to be in different places around the planet and people have seen shows that I'm proud of being a part of, that do have things to say about the human condition, the planet, and who we are and where we've come from, that will sustain. Those ideas are universal and they work in any language.”

“Of course you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise, not foolish. You also have to allow for the self-serving bias of everybody else because most people are not going to remove it all that successfully, the human condition being what it is. If you don't allow for self-serving bias in your conduct, again you're a fool.”