Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Quotes

Language turned apes like us into civil creatures.

Speech is civilization itself.

Who are we? That is the big question. And essentially we are just an upright-walking, big-brained, super-intelligent ape.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

What is it that really makes us, us? It's our collective intelligence. It's our ability to write things down, our language and our consciousness.

Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

A consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from other animals.

Obviously, I'm not a Neanderthal. I do do laundry. I am a human being.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

Human society, the world, and the whole of mankind is to be found in the alphabet.

The true artform is being a human being.

Fashion is instant language.

The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.

As so often happens, I discover that it would have been better to keep my mouth shut.

As for 'drawing you out,' please believe I don't do such things deliberately, with an object -- It's only that I am, as a rule, far more interested in people than they are in me -- But it makes me a nuisance, I know: only an innocent nuisance.

Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.

Many of us get many messages in our lives, or think we get them. As long as the message is regarding our own selves, go on doing what you please. But when it is in regard to our contact with and behavior to others, think a hundred times before you act upon it-and then you will be safe.

Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.

The world and all its wisdom is but a booby, blundering school-boy that needs management and could be managed, if men and women would be human beings instead of just business men, or plumbers, or army officers, or commuters, or educators, or authors, or clubwomen, or traveling salesmen, or Socialists, or Republicans, or Salvation Army leaders, or wearers of cloths.

There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.

I think that when somebody tells you something of value, a lot of the time there's this thing that happens, and I don't know if you find it, where they go exactly for the word or the moment or the thing that you were hoping they wouldn't notice, or inside didn't feel 100 percent secure about. If they point it out, then that really sends you the message of, "Okay, I was trying to override my own instincts about it, and I guess I shouldn't."

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are. By using bad language, we diminish the divine spark within us that defines our humanity.

Music is part of being human.