P. D. James Quotes

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from - it's what he descends to that shames the human race.

Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

Man is born barbarous--he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.

humans are born in truth, but we grow up believing in lies. one of the biggest lies in the story of humanity is the lie of our imperfection.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.

Until we know what motivates the hearts and minds of men we can understand nothing outside ourselves, nor will we ever reach fulfillment as that greatest miracle of all, the human being.

It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute.

Are all humans human, or are some more human than others?

As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.

What a vile and abject thing is man if he do not raise himself above humanity.

When I train, I love to take time off and fly to the Natural History Museum or an exhibition. I just love that. When you know your past, it will help you with your future… That’s why most of my friends are not fighters. Most of my friends are nerds like me. That’s why I have a hard time finding a girlfriend. I need someone to talk science with. I’m married to my work right now. But you never know. One day I could wake up and just do something different. Life is so unpredictable.

The worst of faces still is human.

Our flaws are what makes us human. If we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don't even have to be an issue.

If they say I am inconsistent let them say it, for it is true, because inconsistency is a part of living

In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship.

But as the years went on, I realised that what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

The past is important for all the information and wisdom it holds. But you can get lost in it. You've got to learn to keep the knowledge of the past with you as you pursue the present.