Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.

The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of…

— Carl Schmitt

We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten…

— Rumi

“There are no greater or truer lords, gods, fathers, sons or holy spirits, than the humans. Humans are the highest beings on earth.”

— Abhijit Naskar

Being human, we would expel from our lives physical pain and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort, but if we…

— Spencer W. Kimball

We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love…

— Marc Maron

“There are countless reasons to be jealous. But that doesn’t mean you have to succumb to them.”

— Beth Revis

“I honour the clarity of the present moment, and the stillness at the centre of being (mine & others), even in the midst of…

— Jay Woodman

It's the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of…

— Claire Messud

Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes…

— Terry Eagleton

Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to…

— David Whyte

The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with…

— Steven Pressfield

“Either way, you were connected. By your desires. By your defiance. By the simple, complicated fact of who you were.”

— David Levithan

“...something can be a good thing and yet not a necessary thing. It is good for people to be expert at brain surgery. But…

— Victor Lee Austin

I have no interest in problematizing things. So what I am writing to is that simple sense of being human in myself.

— Ayad Akhtar

Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is…

— Isaiah Berlin