What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delighteth not me…
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Man: The most complex of beings, and thus the most dependent of beings. On all that made you up, you depend.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
By association with natures enormities, a man’s heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the ‘Big Man’ described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China’s first romanticists, we ‘live in heaven and earth as our house.’
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
It takes more than just a good looking body. You’ve got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
—Norman O. Brown (1913–2002) American Social Philosopher, Writer
Even if man’s hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, ‘he’ is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say, “I want to see the manager.”
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
Man alone, during his brief existence on this earth, is free to examine, to know, to criticize, and to create. In this freedom lies his superiority over the forces that pervade his outward life. He is that unique organism in terms of matter and energy, space and time, which is urged to conscious purpose. Reason is his characteristic and indistinguishing principle. But man is only man—and free—when he considers himself as a total being in whom the unmediated whole of feeling and thought is not severed and who impugns any form of atomization as artificial, mischievous, and predatory.
—Ruth Nanda Anshen (1900–2003) American Philosopher
The only bodily organ which is really regarded as inferior is the atrophied penis, a girl’s clitoris.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: “One must not hide that!” Then someone tells you: “The shoulder is on the back.” I’ve never seen women with shoulders on their backs.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented from Hertz-something they are using to get around in but nothing they genuinely care about understanding.
—Chungliang Al Huang (b.1937) Chinese Tai Chi Master
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
—John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Playwright
Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual’s body.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.
—Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American Poet, Essayist
I have found little that is “good” about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.
—Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852–1933) American Author, Educator, Clergyman
The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Man is a self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped, and electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with the segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent activation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries, millions of warning signal, railroad and conveyor systems, crushers and cranes, and a universally distributed telephone system needing no service for seventy years if well managed, the whole extraordinary complex mechanism guided with exquisite precision from a turret in which are located telescopic and microscopic self-registering and recording range-finders, a spectroscope, etc. .. the turret control being closely allied with an air-conditioning intake and exhaust, and a main fuel intake.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.
—Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Prussian German Philosopher, Logician
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator
What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
It is so much more difficult to live with one’s body than with one’s soul. One’s body is so much more exacting: what it won’t have it won’t have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Critic
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