#human beings

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. ↗

— Ma Jian

#basic #become #beings #expression #freedom

Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated. ↗

— Alveda King

#believing #certain #corrupts #falsehood #fully

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#beings #exert #god-given #god-given right #human

In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#beings #comic #human #human beings #i

It is something that most parents hope for in life: That their children will be moderately successful, polite, decent human beings. Anything on top of that is something you have no right to hope for, but we all do. ↗

— Jerry Kramer

#beings #children #decent #hope #human

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#ants #armies #beings #capture #ceaselessly

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature. ↗

— Edward Thorndike

#accustomed #beings #controlling #events #having

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#beings #cannot #choice #endowed #god

In fact, for all kinds of offenses - and, for no offenses - from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same. ↗

— Ida B. Wells

#beings #death #excuse #fact #human

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also. ↗

— Fred Woodworth

#also #any #bad #being #beings