Jacob Bronowski Quotes

When you're an artist, you have to hope for everything and expect nothing.

The hallmark of the human species is great adaptability.

Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now.

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

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.

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

...and luckily I have enough in my head to balance what is wanting in my back.

Our capacity for fulfillment can come only through faith and feelings. But our capacity for survival must come from reason and knowledge.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin.

...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

There is reason to believe that voluntary activity, more than highly developed intellect, distinguishes humans from the animals which stand closest to them.

I don't break; I bounce.

As a fiction writer you train yourself to think about situations subjectively. I don't really care for narratives that are just A, B, C, D, and then E. I like the aura that fiction has, how it can conjure up dream imagery. It's a sort of emotional speculation that you can shape and work with.

It's very easy to attack ourselves. Even comforting in its familiarity, but you must resist this urge at all costs. Dwelling on the past or your perceived flaws will do nothing but keep you under emotional house arrest and hamper your progress. Commit yourself to growth and reward yourself with kindness for choosing to do so!

The reason why I praise the lion is because the lion is the king of the jungle.

I love the whole kind of notion of transformation for me is (what) excites me about not only acting, but storytelling. I love, I love that notion of a slightly larger-than-life artistic truth, you know, magnifying real emotional truth (or) finding something about human condition (which), you wouldn't necessarily think you can learn from characters such as Kong or Gollum, but actually they are, you know, these huge amplifications of a human psyche and I suppose those kind of roles have always attracted me definitely.

Never lose interest in life and the world. Never allow yourself to become annoyed.

Once you experience Third World poverty, you're really changed forever, if you're at all open to it, because we're all united in our common humanity. And we are so made as to feel something for people who are in pain. It's not possible to be human and to be unaffected by what you see in the third world.

Sometimes I'm fragile, sometimes too emotional, but I'm putting everything I can on my side to be a happy person.

Early on, my emotional work had to do with feeling unheard and invisible.

When I look up at the clouds I see so many animals, mostly sheep who have lost their limbs and heads.

You’ll meet her. She’s very pretty, even though sometimes she’s sad for many days at a time. You’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her.