Human impact

“ We are beginning to learn that to swap off a superstition for a fact, to ascertain the real, is to progress. All that gives us better bodies and minds and clothes and food and pictures, grander music, better heads, better hearts, and that makes us better husbands and wives and better citizens, all these things combined produce what we call the progress of the human race. ”

“ Let us divide this spacious earth into equal compartments, and see in which violence, and in which tranquillity prevails. Let us look through the various ranks and occupations of human society, and endeavour to arrive at a conclusion of a similar sort. ”

“ Looked at in this broad light, the history of man's common life in the world will, I think, show two great streams of progress—the progress of man over Nature, or, as we say to-day, in the control of his environment, and the progress of man in what is essentially a moral task—the art of living together with his fellows. These two aspects of human activity and effort are in constant contact and interaction. ”

“ But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present. ”

“ If humanity has made some headway in realizing that the ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect—its effect upon conscious experience—we may well believe that this lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the young. ”

“ Emerging planet-wide social consciousness spread an awareness that the concerns, plans and programs of any part of the human family are of vital importance to the whole of mankind. Change is a universal force which operates in nature, in society, in man himself. ”

“ But then with this recognition of the exposure and peril of human society, of mankind at large, we must associate the recognition of the recoverableness to truth, to virtue and God, of persons and of peoples who are now involved in these calamities and pains; to whom, now, unrest and apprehension are as natural as speech or sight; the recoverableness of men as persons, and of communities as well as persons. ”

“ It is rather an indication which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the substance of human life, are the roots of this movement; and it places it in a line with all those vast controlling movements which have in the course of the ages reorganised human life. ”

“ The social states of human kinds
Are made by multitudes of minds,
And after multitudes of years
A little human growth appears
Worth having, even to the soul
Who sees most plain it's not the whole. ”

“ If it is a matter of indifference, in the formation of human character, whether we mix in society or not, then, for anything I can see, an improvement might be proposed in the construction of the material universe. ”

“ We cannot, however, say more than that the factors of human progress have always had these three aspects, Folk, Place, Work, and that if progress is to continue on stable lines it must always recognise the essential correlation of fitter folk in body and mind: improved habits and functions, alike in work and leisure ”

“ Progress and development mark everything in nature—human societies, as well as everything else. Nothing in the physical world is still; life and motion are in everything; so in the mental, moral, and political. ”

“ Now, the evidence of history and that of human nature combine, by a striking instance of consilience, to show that there really is one social element which is thus predominant, and almost paramount, among the agents of the social progression. This is, the state of the speculative faculties of mankind ”

“ The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level. ”

“ Since man has, in part at least, conscious control of his own destiny, it is of vital importance to human welfare in the future that we should learn, by this comparative study of the past, what are the lines along which progress is to be expected, and what the conditions favorable to this progress, in order that we may use our exceptional powers in harmony with the order of nature. ”

“ When actions of ours, therefore, can influence the state of our country, we associate the idea of those acts as causes, with the pleasurable results as effects, and hence the MOTIVE exists.
To individuals of the great body of the people, wholly in most countries deprived of power, their country can seldom present itself in the light of a motive, because with few acts of theirs as cause, can they associate a benefit to their country as the Effect. ”

“ To inquire and to create;—these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer. ”

“ Before attempting to speculate on these questions, it might be a good idea to consider for a moment the main, fundamental influences which have always been at work, to a greater or less extent, in determining the conduct of human beings. ”

“ But not merely in the individual and his personal life and conduct do these four fundamental forces display such strength and vital energy in the grand development of the whole human race; and in its history we may also observe the same fact. ”

“ TRUTH IN ART The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart. ”

“ I see human progress, not as the spontaneous product of crowds of raw minds swayed by elementary needs, but as a natural but elaborate result of intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions and motives, modified and redirected by literature and art.... ”

“ Lately in all industries and particularly during the late World War, which was itself a gigantic industrial process, another factor manifested itself and proved to be of the utmost importance: namely, the human factor, which is not material but is mental, moral, psychological. ”

“ Henceforth its energies are to flow towards the perfecting of the human race.
"In the great, white light of a higher understanding of these basic and vital truths, let us strive to make conditions for the protection of ALL human life. ”

“ There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage. ”

“ From the death of the old the new proceeds, And the life of truth from the rot of creeds On the ladder of God, which upward leads, The steps of progress are human needs. ”

“ These things lie deep in human nature and in the fundamental conditions of human life. The changes that are taking place, and which seem likely to strengthen in the future, lie chiefly in the importance attached to different qualities. ”

“ Each, as long as the conditions200 of the social medium remained substantially unaltered, will still have his experience and the direction of his restored energies affected by the objects and instrumentalities of the human environment, and by what men at the time currently prize and hold dear. ”

“ The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. ”

“ The stars, the plants, the animals, the human body, yielded all manner of curious knowledge. New powers came into men's hands through this knowledge; new avenues to happiness were opened. Facts wove themselves together in wider and wider combinations. ”

“ As it is, how widely different169 the scenes through which they will pass. So it is with human lives—a crisis is reached, a decision is made, and in one short hour the whole trend of our life is changed with regard to our surroundings, associates, environments, etc. ”

“ It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. ”

“ Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family. ”

“ But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, [228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;—then, and so sanctifying wealth into "commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough; ”

“ The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress. ”

“ Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. ”

“ If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible. ”

“ I understand the task of sociology to be description and determination of the historico-psychological origin of those forms in which interactions take place between human beings. [2] The totality of these interactions, springing from the most diverse impulses, directed toward the most diverse objects, and aiming at the most diverse ends, constitutes “society.” ”

“ Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being? ”

“ I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. ”

“ “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. ”

“ Every phenomenon in social and national life (as in Nature) is an effect, and all these effects are embodied by a cause which is not remote and detached, but which is the immediate soul and life of the effect itself. ”

“ For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race. ”

“ I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. ”

“ I pointed out an important law in Social Psychology, namely, that greatness of individuality is inversely proportional to the mass of the social aggregate. ”

“ The fact is, that care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light; ”