#human beings

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

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. ↗

— Desmond Tutu

#against #apartheid #beings #children #classification

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional. ↗

— Hugo Weaving

#character #complex #compromised #contradictions #contradictory

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

I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient. ↗

— Mo Yan

#am #ancient #aware #beings #crises

Human beings aren't supposed to be controlled and told what to do. ↗

— Ricky Williams

#controlled #human #human beings #supposed #told

There are some examples of medieval kings who were terrible human beings but were nevertheless good kings. ↗

— George R. R. Martin

#examples #good #human #human beings #kings

The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living. ↗

— Thabo Mbeki

#attain #because #beings #communicate #decent

Better understanding of the natural world not only enhances all of us as human beings, but can also be harnessed for the better good, leading to improved health and quality of life. ↗

— Paul Nurse

#beings #better #enhances #good #harnessed