Human Possibilities Quotes

#1. It is not good for a man to be too cognizant of his physical and spiritual mechanisms. Complete knowledge reveals limits to human possibilities, and the less a man is by nature limited in his purposes, the less he can tolerate limits.

Stanislaw Lem

#2. Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

#3. Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities-they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.

Edward McKendree Bounds

#4. When sight ceases, it is the time for faith to work. The greater the difficulties, the easier it is for faith. As long as human possibilities for success remain, faith does not accomplish things as easily as when all natural prospects fail.

George Muller

#5. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high range of human possibilities.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#6. We will either defend the rights of people and the earth, and for that we have to dismantle the rights that corporations have assigned to themselves, or corporations will in the next three decades destroy this planet, in terms of human possibilities.

Vandana Shiva

#7. To be joyful and peaceful within yourself every moment of your life, to be able to perceive life beyond its physical limitations - these are not superhuman qualities. These are human possibilities. Yoga is not about being superhuman; it is about realizing that being human is super.

Sadhguru

#8. Friendship is something whose depth fits human aspirations and fulfills human possibilities. It has heft to it, as a gold-piece does and a gambling chip does not.

Eugene Kennedy

#9. What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior!

W.E.B. Du Bois

#10. The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

Arthur Miller

#11. I rehearsed Foucault's argument that the presence of madness on our doorstep is good for us, for it reminds us the life we live is only one among several human possibilities.

Michael Greenberg

#12. When relationships are determined by manipulation, by the need for control, they may possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the shock of human possibilities has ceased to reverberate through them.

Adrienne Rich

#13. It is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities" -- Pretty Wittgenstein like.

Milan Kundera

#14. Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.

Leon Kass

#15. I regret the whole worlds that will never come into existence, the children, the grandchildren, all the human possibilities that never were and never will be.

Maggie Gallagher

#16. As other perceptions arise ... the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and is transformed.

Jean Baker Miller

#17. Becoming fully rational is not enough anymore; evidently it can lead to distortions of all the great human possibilities.

Thomas Keating

#18. It is the closest instrument to the human voice, and the things you can do on the cello ... there are endless possibilities.

Stjepan Hauser

#19. It's vital as we postulate and work toward exploration and human settlement beyond Earth. I like to think of the possibilities of sustaining humanity's continuum, with preserved recorded history way beyond the life of our Sun.

Vanna Bonta

#20. Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.

Bruno Schulz

#21. I make myself a relentless architect of the possibilities of human beings.

Benjamin Zander

#22. We can simultaneously be human and monster - that both of those possibilities are in all of us.

Matthew Quick

#23. As the rifles were pointed at his chest he wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard. He had thought the possibilities of human silence were endless.

Nicole Krauss

#24. Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

Maria Montessori

#25. The true human being ... is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities.

David Zindell

#26. The machine does not teach playing flexibility, does not help in taking account of human facxtors in the battle, and on whole, strictly speaking, it restricts the possibilities for young players.

Sergei Shipov

#27. Live simply so that others may simply live was marvelously observed by St. Elizabeth Seton . If this simple truth could only be programmed into the human DNA, imagine the possibilities. Until than, the education of the human heart is the answer and our only hope.

Adam Kovacevic

#28. [Y]ou were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not to see the phrase [angle of repose] as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest. As you said, it was too good for mere dirt; you tried to apply it to your own wandering and uneasy life ... I wonder if you ever reached it.

Wallace Stegner

#29. Josh Hanagarne has an astonishing story to tell, and he does so with insight, humor, grace, and wonder. All human beings suffer and struggle. Through the lens of his own miraculous experiences, Mr. Hanagarne illuminates the path to joy and the infinite possibilities of transcendence.

Melanie Rae Thon

#30. Every human heart beat is a universe of possibilities.

Gregory David Roberts

#31. The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi's poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.

Aberjhani

#32. ..Breaking yet budding,
dying yet living - standing
amongst ruins and rage,
reaching for possibilities
playing hard to get.

Meraaqi

#33. To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.

John Updike

#34. Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.

Elias Canetti

#35. A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.

Noam Chomsky

#36. The cosmical importance of this conclusion is profound and the possibilities it opens for the future very remarkable, greater in fact than any suggested before by science in the whole history of the human race.

Francis William Aston

#37. I came. I saw the enormous possibilities and power of the human mind. It is the biggest plot of fertile land in the world. We just have to find the right see and the right technique of cultivation.

Debasish Mridha

#38. I see knowledge increasing and human power increasing. I see ever-increasing possibilities before life, And I see no limits set to it at all, Existence impresses me as a perpetual dawn. Our lives, as I apprehend, are great in expectations.

H.G.Wells

#39. After all, we are human beings, and not creatures of infinite possibilities.

Robertson Davies

#40. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature; the celebrity reveals the possibilities of the media.

Daniel J. Boorstin

#41. Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#42. I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.

Michael Eric Dyson

#43. The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

John Guare

#44. Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing.

Marlon Riggs

#45. The human body is capable of amazing physical deeds. If we could just free ourselves from our perceived limitations and tap into our internal fire, the possibilities are endless.

Dean Karnazes

#46. You can't take the sky from me.

Joss Whedon

#47. We live in a uniform civilization, within well-defined cultural models: furnishings, decorative elements, blankets, record player have all been chosen among a certain number of given possibilities. What can they reveal to you about what she is really like?

Italo Calvino

#48. What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them?

Jane Addams

#49. What's interesting about science is that we're constantly discovering new things about the universe, about ourselves, about our bodies, about diseases, about the possibilities of the future. It's amazing. Science is one of the coolest things about being a human being - without a doubt.

Joe Rogan

#50. Faith in Qur'anic revelation unveils all the possibilities that lie before the human intellect.

Osman Bakar

#51. All we've got left to protect here is a system that's set up to promote the meanest possibilities in human nature and make them look good.

William Gaddis

#52. As a rule, the human mind gets attached to possessions very firmly. They don't want to lose anything. They hold on to the little possession and can't see the big possibilities.

Debasish Mridha

#53. The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

#54. Central to America's rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition with the vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life.

Mitt Romney

#55. When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.

Wendell Berry

#56. It is the artist who tries to gradually accustom people to the possibilities of a better state of things.

C.A. Dawson Scott

#57. You are about to enter the realms of human beings. Be prepared for cruelty and kindness, for friendship and hatred. People are made of all possibilities and conditions.

Stuart Hill

#58. True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions - does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.

George Eliot

#59. What feminism means for me is simply that women, like men, are complete human beings with limitless possibilities.

Fahmida Riaz

#60. What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do.

John Guare

#61. No: she is one of us, and what she said and did on that April evening was, like the warm sunlit sky, enough: for me, for the end of winter, for the infinite possibilities of the human heart.

Andre Dubus

#62. Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.

Alison Gopnik

#63. How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#64. There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.

Joshua Foer

#65. There is far more spiritual potential within than most people realize. The potential is so great that to define it in words would be impossible.

Belsebuub

#66. The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.

John Dewey

#67. The arts open your heart and mind to possibilities that are limitless. They are pathways that touch upon our brains and emotions and bring sustenance to imagination. Human beings' greatest form of communication, they walk in tandem with science and play, and best describe what it is to be human.

Jacques D'Amboise

#68. just because of its promise of unlimited possibilities technology is an empty form like the most formalistic logic and is unable to determine the content of life.that is why our time,being the most intensely technical,is also the emptiest in all human history.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#69. To perceive how language works, what pitfalls it conceals, what its possibilities are, is to comprehend a crucial aspect of the complicated business of living the life of a human being.

S.I. Hayakawa

#70. In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of human nature.

C. Wright Mills

#71. It is not what happens to you in life that makes the difference. It is how you react to each circumstance you encounter that determines the result. Every human being in the same situation has the possibilities of choosing how he will react - either positively or negatively.

Earl Nightingale

#72. We are undoing a pattern ... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.

Pema Chodron

#73. Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.

Norman Cousins

#74. We've painted ourselves into a corner where the only choice is real nightmare - triage, epidemic disease, famine, fascism, the collapse of human rights - or a leap to an entirely different level. We've taken business-as-usual off the menu. Now only the extreme possibilities loom.

Terence McKenna

#75. This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it.

Jonas Salk

#76. The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race: that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#77. No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.

Octavia Butler

#78. If human beings possessed endless possibilities, then cities contained exponential hopes.

Sherman Alexie

#79. The vastness of possibilities in space reminded me that while my life felt important, it was tiny in the scheme of things. Human civilization was only a blink on the radar of time.

Michelle Madow

#80. The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization.

Hans Hofmann

#81. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

Bill Bryson

#82. All nations that throw their military weight around, occupying neighboring lands and treating the residents with callous and humiliating disregard, are already sliding towards the dark possibilities in human nature.

Michael Leunig

#83. All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.

John O'Donohue

#84. Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.

Bertrand Russell

#85. The variety of shape, pattern, and color found in the languages of the world is a testament to the wonder of nature, to the breathtaking array of possibilities that can emerge, tangled and wild, from the fertile human endowments of brain and larynx, intelligence and social skills.

Arika Okrent

#86. Even the men most richly endowed with ability, education, and opportunity, even the giants of the race, after the completest life possible, feel, as they stand on the edge of the grave, that they are but human acorns with all their possibilities still in them, just beginning to sprout.

Orison Swett Marden

#87. Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

Emma Goldman

#88. Unity in diversity is the highest possible attainment of a civilization, a testimony to the most noble possibilities of the human race. This attainment is made possible through passionate concern for choice, in an atmosphere of social trust.

Michael Novak

#89. If physical mobility is an essential condition of freedom, the bicycle has probably been the greatest single device for achieving what Marx called the full realization of the possibilities of being human invented since Gutenberg, and the only one without obvious drawbacks.

Eric Hobsbawm

#90. All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life. Change is the one constant in human history.

Wade Davis

#91. These are the two possibilities for human life.

Adam Nicolson

#92. Each human being was given two possibilities: action and contemplation. Both lead to the same place.

Paulo Coelho

#93. Today we are aware as never before of the plurality of human life-styles and possibilities, while at the same time being tied, like in an old silent movie, to a runaway locomotive rushing headlong toward a very singular catastrophe

Gary Snyder

#94. There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman! No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.

Samuel Gompers

#95. Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature ... This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life.

John Dewey

#96. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]

David Foster Wallace

#97. Every human heartbeat, he's said many times, is a universe of possibilities.

Gregory David Roberts

#98. Heaven grants the human being who has learned to live alone a deep measure of such rewards that verily would one hesitate to sacrifice such proved satisfactions, such rare unending possibilities of contentment for anything less than certainty more certain still.

Cornelia Parker