Charles Dickens Quotes

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize?

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us.

At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future.

We're the first technology-creating species. We use technology to extend our reach. We didn't stay in the caves, and we haven't stayed on the planet. To play jazz with our genomes and the universe might ultimately be what we're all about.

All history is man's efforts to realize ideals.

My own hope is that, as a human species, we are on a long journey of evolution toward increasingly more tolerant and nonviolent behavior.

Growth is the surviving influence in all our lives. The tree will send up its trunk in thick profusion from land burned black by atom bombs. Children will grow from poverty and filth and oppression and develop honor, integrity, contribute to all mankind.

The modern movement declares that it is quite worth while to produce a better man, and this is to be done by making him an animal of a finer breed…. What wonders have been accomplished with pigs and cattle; try the same methods, have patience, and you will produce a race of saints and heroes.

Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind.

He will be an extraordinary person, that pure American, who will be standing in my place five thousand years from today. He will have what no other human being has had in just the same richness, the inheritance of all ages, all races, all cultures…. a true superman, standing on the shoulders of those from all nations and races of the earth.

Man will put foward a goal to raise himself to a new level to create a higher sicio-biological type.

The message of 'Star Trek,' if there is one, seems to be that we should try to live up to the very best that we're capable of.

'Star Trek' speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans.

In the past 20 years scientists from very diverse disciplines - anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists - have all moved to a much more hopeful, optimistic view of human nature.

I am hopeful about the future of humanity.

The opening of space to human development and settlement is the most important activity of the human species. From hope to health, from wonder to wealth, the environment, and the very act of living, space is the future.

As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.

And step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man.

Meals, in the sense in which we understand this word, began with the second age of the human species.

Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

There is no situation that is not transformable. There is no person who is hopeless. There is no set of circumstances that cannot be turned about by ordinary human beings and their natural capacity for love of the deepest sort.

What's been great about the human race gives you a sense of how great you might get, how far you can reach.

Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.