Hans Jonas Quotes

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

And every human being is precious.

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.

Man is really free, the real man cannot but be free.

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.

The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.

If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots.

The "value" or "worth" of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.

And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.

All human life is precious.

It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.

I must try to live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls.

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

I'm fine with Nature's way, as long as Nature keeps it out of *my* way.

Whoever regards human beings as a herd and flees them as swiftly as he can will no doubt be overtaken by them and impaled on theirhorns.

There isno triumph or glory in the world that's worth an inch of human skin.

Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.

My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence.

Whether humanity is to comprehensively prosper...depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: are humans worthwhile to universe invention?

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.

In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.

Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.