Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.
You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. The Rising didn't manage to wipe out the human race, it just made us turn into even bigger assholes than we were before. Hear that, mad science? You failed. You were supposed to kill us all, and instead you turne...
Try not to be self-conscious […] or so critical. Don’t mope around looking for someone else to make you happy, and remember that the vast majority of homosexuals are looking for a superman to love and find it very difficult to love anyone merely ...
Feminism, in its fullest meaning, enjoins the human race to establish zones of liberation, and literally to reshape the territorial definition of our patriarchal world, along with the social identities and injustices that those boundaries have define...
It was the yearning she related to. Shriver seemed to understand the specific human pain of wanting and pushing away at the same time. It left her with a gorgeous ache, and when she turned the last page of the book and closed the cover, Norah's conne...
To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehend...
According to the prophecy a child was going to come along that would be part human and part robot and this child was going to change everything. Of course it was way too soon – both sides were totally unprepared, not to mention the fact that they h...
What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we de...
The cabin will return to the soil when abandoned by its owner, yet in its simplicity it offers perfect protection against the seasonal cold without disfiguring the sheltering forest. With the yurt and the igloo, it figures among the handsomest human ...
I only ask your help, for which I have nothing to give in return." "Nothing? You call your theory nothing" "Weigh it in the balance with the freedom of one single human spirit," he said, turning to her, "and which will weigh heavier? Can you tell? I ...
Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity's inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate in our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and...
If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster ...
Wandering is the activity of the child, the passion of the genius; it is the discovery of the self, the discovery of the outside world, and the learning of how the self is both "at one with" and "separate from" the outside world. These discoveries ar...
I don't know if what I'm seeing are worms, or where they come from, or what they might be if they're worms, or whether I want them to be worms or not, or what I have to believe about this woman if they aren't worms, or about the world or human bodies...
Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascer...
There is no way to tell if we are the pioneers of a visionary new age, whisking humanity into the high vibrations of an interdimensional love party, or post-modern Don Quixotes attacking techno-industrial windmills with our flimsy, rolled-up yoga mat...
Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it.... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning first, winn...
Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any concepti...
Where is an intimate friend who’ll hear the secret from me straight out– of what human beings have been from the moment they began? They are born of toil and molded from the clay of sorrow. They wander the world for a time, then set off.
Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One’s religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of ...
