But Andrew was right about one thing. Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it's the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not simply nice things to have; they are essential s...
The decisions we make lead us to complex behavioral sets, and what we decide to do can be consciously and unconsciously motivated. The human being, however, is a small-group decision-making animal, a small pack animal, with a will to life, who engage...
...there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourse...
Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to o...
Boundaries, rulers, and names of nations can change, but the Earth is always our home and our source of life. Earth is the only indelible identity we can have. This is why I am suggesting that we expand our identities beyond the limits of nationality...
I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such ep...
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Inst...
One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the claim that humans, like all an...
When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give m...
Later, Aldapuerta spent two years at medical school where he learned the geography of the human body and something of its almost infinite capacity for suffering anddegradation. He took especial delight in tending to the physically incapacitated and w...
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view...
Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action,...
Light is important to us humans. It influences our moods, our perceptions, our energy levels. A face glimpsed among trees, dappled by the shadows and the green-tinged light reflected from the forest, will seem quite different to the same face seen on...
Maneck studied beggermaster's excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did human do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were th...
Don't you even think of holding back, or I'll...I'll tell Spade you let me get away from you," she improvised. "And that I got mugged," she added for good measure. Cries of "Mon Dieu!" and "That's not fair!" echoed immediately from the two vampires. ...
Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women’s bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them and their owners. Whether the curves imposed are the ebullien...
[T]hat all seekers of knowledge should use the identical language to think and to read and write is not a development to which humanity can remain indifferent. Reality is constructed by languages, and the existence of a variety of languages means the...
Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread – a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just me...
But strength doesn’t always mean brute force. You don’t have to kick ass to be a fighter. Violence doesn’t equal strength. Lead your army by example. There’s a better answer to all this. War isn’t going to solve anything, but it will tear o...
The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions has...
Those who’ve left their bootprints in the trenches are those who value human life most. They get unwanted glimpses into the savage nature we really have underneath all the expensive clothes and moisturized skin. This of course, rules out the politi...
