A Quote by John Edgar Wideman
That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is.
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Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers. That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is. There is no American or Frenchhistory. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.
Terror outfits like ISIS don't believe in a plural society and diversity of faith, which reflects inherent beauty of human beings.
Not that I ever felt the necessity of proving that all human beings suffer the same way, feel joy the same way, but it happened on my way - when I get close to these people, just by the simple intervention of translation I can actually reach them and ask them something, and their reaction is as I expected. I see that the relationship goes so smoothly, and I realize that cultural languages and specificities are nothing but simple obstacles that you can easily overcome. It's obvious that human beings are the same wherever they are.
Myths are the world's dreams. They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that then have to find expression in symbolic form.
When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.
We're all human beings. Experience is experience, let's just be honest. Let's not try and dissect suffering into a race, or whatever you want to call it. We're all human beings, one way or another. All races have gone through times that are challenging; that's part of being a human.
My belief is that no human being or society composed of human beings ever did or ever will come to much unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.
Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child. Black Beauty now ... !
I think Whitman more than any other poet possessed the gift of revealing to others the beauty of everything around us, the beauty of nature, the beauty of human beings.
Dr. King was one of the most inspiring human beings I ever met. He was such a warm, compassionate, and loving human being.
I am a person who has many dreams. But as soon as I accomplish one, I move on to the next. That's my fatal, absurd nature. Human beings are slaves to our dreams, and I am, too. Now I think I just want to share my musical proposal in its entire form.
I hated [Robert Mugabe]. He's one of the worst human beings I've ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.
I had a foretaste of another, larger kind of knowledge: one I believe human beings will be able to access in ever larger numbers in the future. But conveying that knowledge now is rather like a chimpanzee, becoming a human for a single day to experience all of the wonders of human knowledge, and then returning to one's chimp friends and trying to tell them what it was like knowing several different Romance languages, the calculus, and the immense scale of the universe.
We need to remind ourselves of the beauty of human connection and of nature and pull ourselves out of devices for a moment and appreciate what it is just to be human beings.
The dreams of human beings are dark, heavy and morbid and simplistic and boring. The dreams of immortality are endless and shining, they shimmer, they glow.
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