#human

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#human #life #machines #relationships #death

Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.” “I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.” Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.” “Thanks . . . but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’” “Yeah, well, we’re all almost something. ↗

— Neal Shusterman

#death

Да, человек смертен, но это было бы еще полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чем фокус! И вообще не может сказать, что он будет делать в сегодняшний вечер. ↗

— Mikhail Bulgakov

#life-and-death #death

Where is an intimate friend who’ll hear the secret from me straight out– of what human beings have been from the moment they began? They are born of toil and molded from the clay of sorrow. They wander the world for a time, then set off. ↗

— Omar Khayyám

#death #humans #life #sorrow #death

. . . things whose perishing had been arrested by their power to make her love them. ↗

— Denis Johnson

#human #love #memory #perish #remember

In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions. ↗

— Laurie Matthew

#child-abuse #childabuse #childhood-abuse #crime #death

Beyond the curve of his days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity--happiness was human, eternity ordinary. ↗

— Albert Camus

#happiness #human #death

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence ↗

— Voltaire

#intelligent-design #design

Rather than ask yourself if you are correct, it is far more realistic to think about how you are mistaken. Most humans have not been designed to be right very often. ↗

— Kouhei Kadono

#humans #mistaken #design

...and I came to the conclusion that in any project we design and develop, the size and degree of complexity of the information and control systems inscribed in it are the crucial factors, so that the all-embracing and absolute perfection of the concept can in practice coincide, indeed ultimately must coincide, with its chronic dysfunction and constitutional instability. ↗

— W.G. Sebald

#human-condition #wisdom #design