Edward T. Hall Quotes

I don't think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our ancestors, there was a gradual expansion of the brain; there was an expansion of the complexity of tools.

Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.

I know from my own experience that there is much more to 'intelligence' than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.

We are placed in the genus of Homo, which is Latin for man - Homo sapiens: supposedly wise men. I sometimes think - wonder - whether we really are wise men.

We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

We are a very, very unusual species.

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

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

What makes us human is that we ask questions. All the animals have interests, instincts and conceptions. All the animals frame for themselves an idea of the world in which they live. But we alone question our surroundings.

Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

I think the default position of humans is to be terrible, and we have to train it out of our children. That's just part of survival, right? Predator animals don't survive by being nice; humans are basically predator animals.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.

The only difference between me and my critics is that I don't lie to the world about who I am. People are complicated and often seemingly hypocritical. Embrace the diversity of your mind.

I've realized that I can't control what the hell everyone else is gonna do. People are crazy. People want different things.

Roles are extremely finite, but human beings are infinite.

I think my thing is that... I don't know. And that's why I don't wanna sing about 'This is me, this is who I am' because, like, even the question, 'Tell me about yourself' - what are you supposed to say? 'Ooh, I'm a happy girl, but I'm sad, too'? People are so complex.

We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.

Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are.

How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.