Homo Sapiens Quotes

“The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.

Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.

Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.

It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.

And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others.”
― Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe: Part One, 1858

“For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“After all, when ‘the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become’ He resolved to ‘wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them’ (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Ha entrado en escena el Homo sedentarius. Ahora es el alimento el que migra hacia nosotros, junto con artículos de lujo y otros bienes de consumo que no existieron durante la mayor parte de la historia humana.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“For generation after generation, our ancestors young and old woke up each morning thankful to be alive and with no choice but to spend several hous walking, digging, and doing other physical activities to survive to the next day. Sometimes they also played or danced for enjoyment and social reasons. Otherwise, they generally steered clear of nonessential physical activities that divert energy from the only thing evolution really cares about: reproduction.”
― Daniel E. Lieberman, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

“We get into fights or lust for imperial dominion over another nation for reasons of pride.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

“Our differences are fascinating, but our similarities make us human.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

“... el humanismo se convirtió en la religión dominante en el mundo y [...] es probable que intentar cumplir el sueño humanista cause su desintegración.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Drug-taking, it is significant, plays an important part in almost every primitive religion. The Persians and, before them, the Greeks and probably the ancient Hindus used alcohol to produce religious ecstasy; the Mexicans procured the beatific vision by eating a poisonous cactus; a toadstool filled the Shamans of Siberia with enthusiasm and endowed them with the gift of tongues.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

“One of the first things that Homo Sapiens did with his newly developed rationality and self-consciousness was to set them to work finding out ways to by-pass analytical thinking and to transcend or, in extreme cases, temporarily obliterate, the isolating awareness of the self.”
― Aldous Huxley

“All the natural narcotics, stimulants, relaxants and hallucinants known to the modern botanist and pharmacologist were discovered by primitive man and have been in use from time immemorial.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

“There is an urge to self-transcendence and, with it, the victims of tension, becomes acute and agonizing. In every human culture certain procedures for achieving temporary self-transcendence, and thereby relieving tension, have been developed and systematically employed. These procedures may be classified under a few comprehensive headings. There are chemical methods, the musical and gymnastic methods, the methods that depend on the subjection of insulated individuals to the influence of the crowds, the various religious methods and, finally the methods whose purpose is mystical self-transcendence -the various yogas and spiritual exercises of Oriental and Western traditions.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

“Alcohol is one of the oldest and certainly the most widely used of all consciousness-changing drugs. Unfortunately, it is a rather inefficient and, at the same time, a rather dangerous drug.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

“All the naturally occurring sedatives, narcotics, euphorics, hallucinogens, and excitants were discovered thousands of years ago, before the dawn of civilization. This surely is one of the strangest facts in that long catalogue of improbabilities known as human history. It is evident that primitive man experimented with every root, twig, leaf, and flower, every seed, nut, berry and fungus in his environment. Pharmacology is older than agriculture. There is good reason to believe that even in paleolithic times, while he was still a hunter and a food-gatherer, man killed his animal and human enemies with poisoned arrows. By the late Stone Age, he was systematically poisoning himself.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

“We as the species of Homo Sapiens are meant to climb mountains because mountains are a challenge for us.”
― Avijeet Das

“We as the species of Homo Sapiens are meant to climb mountains, because mountains are a challenge for us.”
― Avijeet Das

“Nuestra civilización sufre a causa de plantas cuya existencia se remonta tiempos inmemoriales, y cuyas respectivas virtudes fueron explotadas a fondo por todas las grandes culturas. Hasta hace algunas décadas nadie se preocupaba de regular su siembra o recolección, mientras ahora ese hecho botánico cobra dimensión de catástrofe planetaria. A tal punto es así que su amenaza reúne a capitalistas y comunistas, a cristianos, mahometanos y ateos, a ricos y pobres, en una cruzada por la salud mental y moral de la humanidad.”
― Antonio Escohotado, Historia general de las drogas

“La agricultura modifica los valores del cazador paleolítico, poniendo en lugar del mundo animal el vegetal, transformando la zoolatría en culto a la fecundidad, promoviendo el principio femenino a una posición superior y convirtiendo a la deidad celeste en un -deus otiosus-.”
― Antonio Escohotado, Historia general de las drogas

“El momento presente, alejado tanto de un ideal como del otro, se caracteriza por algo que puede llamarse -era del sucedáneo-, con tasas nunca vistas de envenenados por distintos adulterantes, drogas nuevas que lanzar sin cesar laboratorios clandestinos y incontables personas detenidas, multadas, encarceladas y ejecutadas cada año en el planeta.”
― Antonio Escohotado, Historia general de las drogas

“We are failing as one human race. Nothing seems to justify our so called I.Q levels. We are bent upon annihilating the world.”
― Avijeet Das

“We are failing as one human race. Nothing seems to justify our so called I.Q levels. We are bent on annihilating the world.”
― Avijeet Das

“We are failing as one human race. Nothing seems to justify our so-called I.Q. levels. We are bent on annihilating the world.”
― Avijeet Das

“Our minds have advanced from the brutal, terrified, survivalist ethos of Mr. Caveman to the secure plateau of modern-day living. We now expect to survive into our eighties or beyond, to not endure brutal conditions, and to be able to negotiate a society that provides pathways toward success and even happiness, which is one reason I assert that happiness is a modern invention. It is when societies begin to break clown and fail in their promises that we begin to question this exchange.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“I assume, that the rules changed after language's fortuitous appearance. Natural selection's decision was a no-brainer so to speak. The brain of modern sapiens with their more intense cognitivity, hierarchically structured mind, and conceptual consciousness trumped Mr. Neanderthal's primitive brutality. Homo sapiens proved that. But the primitive organization's old ways are still trying to recapture territory, the territory between our ears.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“This book forwards the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a product of very recent evolutionary events. Although humans, or something like them, have been around for some six million years, language has been extant for a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years. The onset of language was afforded by skyrocketing advances in brain development, the central nervous system ballooning incrementally over eons of time to the point where the fetus's little head could barely navigate Momma's birth canal. The Horno sapiens brain profited from a unique folding of the cerebral cortex, allowing for greater speed and a sly adeptness at symbol formation that led to speech.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Prehistoric humans were too busy clawing their way to survival to consider suicide any sort of necessary option. Perhaps in a situation of imminent death there might be a decision to end one’s own life one’s own way instead of, say, by being ripped limb from limb by a surly gorilla. But apart from that, no, suicide was not a feature of the prehistoric human’s repertoire. In fact, I would further assert that suicide can only be a facet of modern society that expects happiness. And on that and many other bases, I suggest that happiness is a modern invention.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Humans went from experiential and physical beings to conceptual ones, and one could surmise that in the future we will become even more brainy still. The changes in sedentary lifestyle alone are staggering. Dietary changes might have led to a diabetes since there may be different levels of pancreatic reserve. The explosion of carbohydrate intake that moderns indulge in may surpass the limit of the pancreas to endure, resulting in either childhood diabetes or later onset type 2 diabetes. We must be careful not to outsmart ourselves and in vanquishing the predators that plagues us for millions of years to create new ones. Having moved from chaos to order, we need to appreciate order’s value, to protect and enhance it. Any slide into chaos may well be swift and irreversible.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Humans evolved in nature. Our sense of beauty evolved to attract us to environments in which our ancestors thrived, such as grasslands with trees and water, where herbivores are plentiful, or the ocean’s edge, with its rich marine resources. The great evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson said that humans are ‘biophilic’, by which he meant that humans have ‘the urge to affiliate with other forms of life’. This is why people travel to wondrous natural destinations.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness