John Shelby Spong Quotes

The powers, aspirations, and mission of man are such as to raise the study of his origin and nature, inevitably and by the very necessity of the case, from the mere physiological to the psychological stage of scientific operations.

At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species.

Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man

I want to talk about the nature of human beings or how we're evolving as a race.

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.

The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.

There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

Perfect people don't exist. And perfect people, if they existed, would be very boring. It is imperfection that keeps life interesting.

The sons of Adam are formed from dust; if not humble as the dust, they fall short of being men.

So what if man's body evolved from the monkeys? Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it.

There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in 'Childhood's End.' But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.

People are capable of great, great change during the span of one lifetime. And women even more than men.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil . He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being.

Nobody wants to watch perfect people.