Human Beings Are Not Perfect Quotes & Sayings

Sinclair Lewis is the perfect example of the false sense of time of the newspaper world ... [ellipsis in source] He was always dominated by an artificial time when he wrote Main Street ... He did not create actual human beings at any time. That is what makes it newspaper. Sinclair Lewis is the typical newspaperman and everything he says is newspaper. The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial. — Gertrude Stein

No relationship is perfect and no human being is perfect. — Amerie

I want you to understand that what is black to one person is white to another. And nothing in this world is so perfect that it is pure white, or so bad it is pure black. Everything concerning human beings comes in shades of gray, Carrie. — V.C. Andrews

The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be ... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program. — Fred Brooks

Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinite straight lines and perfect circles, and its deductions are sound and useful even though the world does not really have infinite straight lines or perfect circles. The world is close enough to the idealization that the theorems can usefully be applied. Similarly, ethical theory requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused, and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events. As long as there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close enough to the idealization of free will that moral theory can meaningfully be applied to it. — Steven Pinker

I'm a human being. I'm not perfect. — Jack Abramoff

Human beings are not nearly as coolly rational as we like to think we are. Having set up comfortable planets of belief, we become resistant to altering them, and develop cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing the world with perfect clarity. We aspire to be perfect Bayesian abductors, impartially reasoning to the best explanation - but most often we take new data and squeeze it to fit with our preconceptions. — Sean Carroll

Everyone else on the planet, from the lowest amoebae to the great blue whale, expresses all their component elements in a perfect dance with the world around them. Only human beings have unfulfilled lives. — Nicholas Lore

One crucial fact must be kept in mind: none of the roughly seventy thousand nuclear weapons built by the United States since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently or without proper authorization. The technological and administrative controls on those weapons have worked, however imperfectly at times - and countless people, military and civilian, deserve credit for that remarkable achievement. Had a single weapon been stolen or detonated, America's command-and-control system would still have attained a success rate of 99.99857 percent. But nuclear weapons are the most dangerous technology ever invented. Anything less than 100 percent control of them, anything less than perfect safety and security, would be unacceptable. And if this book has any message to preach, it is that human beings are imperfect. — Eric Schlosser

Nature knows nothing of imperfection; imperfection is a human perception of nature. Inasmuch as we are part of nature we are also perfect; it is our humanity that is imperfect. And, ironically, because of our capacity for imperfection and error we are free beings - a freedom that no stone or animal can enjoy. Without the possibility of error and real indeterminacy implied by the quantum theory, human liberty is meaningless. The God that plays dice has set us free. — Heinz R. Pagels

But I'm a believer in the perfectibility of human beings. I think we can be better. I think we can be perfect or near to it. And when we become our best selves, the possibilities are endless. We can solve any problem. We can cure any disease, end hunger, everything, because we won't be dragged down by all our weaknesses, our petty secrets, our hoarding of information and knowledge. We will finally realize our potential. — Dave Eggers

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders. — Marian Wright Edelman

We are not perfect human beings, nor do we have to pretend to be, but it is necessary for us to be the best version of ourselves we can be. — Satsuki Shibuya

I love raising animals. I look at animals as more perfect human beings. I can relate to an animal. — Carroll Shelby

There are no perfect human beings and even those who we pray such as Allah, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna among others, were not perfect. — Santosh Kalwar

It amazes me that organs that piss Can give human beings such perfect bliss. — Irving Layton

In his eyes shone the reflection of the most beautiful planet in the Universe
a planet that is not too hot and not too cold; that has liquid water on the surface and where the gravity is just right for human beings and the atmosphere is perfect for them to breathe; where there are mountains and deserts and oceans and islands and forests and trees and birds and plants and animals and insects and people
lots and lots of people. Where there is life. Some of it, possibly, intelligent. — Stephen Hawking

The old concept of chronological, orderly, symmetrical development of character died when it was discovered that the unconscious motivations are entirely at odds with fabricated conventions. Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, backtrack, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic! — Anais Nin

There have been times during my life when I have wish to be a boy again, not to have the energy and perfect health of youth, but know once more the innocence and the delight in even the smallest of things that we often fail to feel full strength as the years drift by. What is easy to forget, however, until you apply yourself to the task of memory, is that childhood is a time of fear, as well; some of those fears are reasonable, others irrational and inspired by a sense of powerlessness in a world where often power over others seems to be what drives so many of our fellow human beings. In the swoon of childhood, the possibility of werewolves is as real as the school yard shooter, the idea of vampires as credible as the idea of a terrorist attack, the neighbor possessing paranormal talents as believable as a psychopath. — Dean Koontz

The Perfect Matrimony is the union of two beings; one who loves more, and the other who loves better. The best religion available to the human race is Love. — Samael Aun Weor

We are all human beings, and we all have insecurities, but it's about being healthy and happy with yourself. I'm not perfect, and I will indulge in pizza and sweets on occasion. The goal is to make the majority of your decisions good for your body. So listen to your body, and treat it like your temple. — Jacqueline MacInnes Wood

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips ... I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing. — Yann Martel

We all have issues. Human beings are flawed, and all we can hope for is to work toward making ourselves better. Not perfect, just better. — L. H. Cosway

What was exchanged in the language of their eyes, more perfect than their lips, the language afforded the soul so that no sound disturbs an ecstasy of feeling? In those moments, when the thought of the two happy beings meld through their pupils, words move slowly, coarsely, like the raspy, awkward noise of thunder from dazzling light that appears after the quickness of the flash. It expresses feelings previously known, ideas yet understood, and in the end, if one must use words, it is because the heart's ambitions - which dominates one's whole being and overflows with happiness - wishes with the whole human organism, with all its physical and psychical faculties, to embody the poem of joy that the spirit has intoned. Language has no answer to the questions of love that either shimmer or hide within a glance. The smile must respond; the kiss, the sigh. — Jose Rizal

Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men havethe same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable. — Angelina Grimke

Relax," Edith says. "The perfect name will come to you in time." Which is when Gogol announces, "There's no such thing." "No such thing as what?" Astrid says. "There's no such thing as a perfect name. I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen," he adds. "Until then, pronouns. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Just because you have superpowers, that doesn't mean your love life would be perfect. I don't think superpowers automatically means there won't be any personality problems, family problems or even money problems. I just tried to write characters who are human beings who also have superpowers. — Stan Lee

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted. — Aldous Huxley

I want to put a soul in a garment. I don't want my clothes to be perfect, because human beings are not perfect. You can meet somebody in one of my jackets and it can all look a bit wrong, but also human and beautiful. Cutting nonchalance into a garment is difficult, because you can't just make an oversized or an asymmetric garment - it will look ugly. Making it look natural is delicate work. If it's too obvious, then it looks fake. Balancing the garment is a painstaking task, because you have to keep in mind how the clothes move. — Ann Demeulemeester

In existence, no human being is perfect. Every person has his own unique nature and individual field of expertise. Even those, whom we know as gods were unaware of the knowledge of science all their life. So, instead of paying attention to your shortcomings, concentrate on your talents and harness your potential. — Deep Trivedi

God bestows great gifts on human beings with perfect justice, but not All gifts we are given come from God. Some gifts come from society or culture, and it is here that problems develop. — John Mark Reynolds

It is my fundamental conviction that compassion - the natural capacity of the human heart to feel concern for and connection with another human being - constitutes a basic aspect of our nature shared by all human beings, as well as being the foundation of our happiness. All ethical teachings, whether religious or nonreligious, aim to nurture this innate and precious quality, to develop it and to perfect it. — Dalai Lama

Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men. — Henry David Thoreau

Dealing with another human being on an intimate level is an exercise that is inherently fraught with difficulties. All human beings have good and bad traits/habits--no one is perfect. Even the most wonderful, "perfect for you" guy is going to do things that annoy you to no end, like leaving the toilet seat up, farting in bed, or conveniently forgetting how to put a new roll of toilet paper on the holder after using the last of it. That's life, people. — Zofie Kae

Sorrow is permitted human beings, but it is not to be desired if we would be like You, Lord God. For You, who love souls far more purely than we and feel a perfect pity for others, are wounded, yet without sorrow. How can we be like You in this? — Augustine Of Hippo

I revere you. I esteem and admire you above all human beings. You are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half. You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women. And you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling ... You are now all my own ... How will my soul find room for its happiness? It seems already bursting! — Fanny Burney

The Decalogue is not negative law in any sense whatsoever. The Decalogue is not taking anything away from human beings. The Decalogue is God's perfect way to ensure human safety and well-being. It is leading them along the path of holiness. The commandments of the Decalogue are indeed the special way of life for the redeemed, saved, and liberated children of God whom He wishes to be holy as He is holy. Since the giving of the law follows Israel's redemption, it is evident that the law cannot be used for the sake of gaining salvation (Issues in Revelation and Inspiration, p. 164). — Gerhard F. Hasel

Instead of insisting that human beings attain perfection, Lutheran spirituality begins by facing up to imperfection. We cannot perfect our conduct, try as we might. We cannot understand God through our own intellects. We cannot become one with God. Instead of human beings having to do these things, Lutheran spirituality teaches that God does them for us - He becomes one with us in Jesus Christ; He reveals Himself to our feeble understandings by His Word; He forgives our conduct and, in Christ, lives the perfect life for us. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Socrates said the perfect society would be based on a great lie. People would be told that lie from the cradle, and they would believe it, because human beings need to make order out of chaos. — Anne Frasier

It used to be said in antislavery days that a people who would tacitly consent to the enslavement of 4,000,000 human beings were incapable of being just to each other, and I believe this same rule holds with regard to the injustice practiced by men towards women. So long as all men conspire to rob women of the citizen's right to perfect equality in all the privileges and immunities of our so-called "free" government, we can not expect these same men to be capable of perfect justice to each other. — Susan B. Anthony

Mock you!" repeated he earnestly, "no I revere you! I esteem and I admire you above all human beings! you are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half! you are the most amiable, the most perfect of women! and you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling. — Fanny Burney

To diminish the worth of women, men had to diminish the worth of the moon. They had to drive a wedge between human beings and the trees and the beasts and the waters, because trees and beasts and waters are as loyal to the moon as to the sun. They had to drive a wedge between thought and feeling ... At first they used Apollo as the wedge, and the abstract logic of Apollo made a mighty wedge, indeed, but Apollo the artist maintained a love for women, not the open, unrestrained lust that Pan has, but a controlled longing that undermined the patriarchal ambition. When Christ came along, Christ, who slept with no female ... Christ, who played no musical instrument, recited no poetry, and never kicked up his heels by moonlight, this Christ was the perfect wedge. Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses. — Tom Robbins

One year before the Rapture " ... that proves how marvellous God's love is, even for the most miserable human beings, being that demons can never take a human figure in a perfect form, and so the most stupid people are able to discover them." Nicholas Remy, Daemonolatreiae libri tres, 1595. — Phillip W. Simpson

I'm not perfect. I think more highly of snow and ice than love. It's easier for me to be interested in mathematics than to have affection for my fellow human beings. But I am anchored to something in life that is constant. You can call it a sense of orientation; you can call it woman's intuition; you can call it whatever you like. I'm standing on a foundation and have no farther to fall. It could be that I haven't managed to organize my life very well. But I always have a grip - with at least one finger at a time - on Absolute Space. That's why there's a limit to how far the world can twist out of joint, and to how badly things can go before I find out. I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that something is wrong. I — Peter Hoeg

I continue to experience my faith in God as a personal relationship between the two of us. However, having admitted my commonality with the human race, I find that my faith does not flourish in isolation. As much as I hate to admit it, my faith is enhanced and enlarged when in relationship to other less-than-perfect human beings. Even though at times other Christians can be quite annoying, I feel very fortunate to have found my way back to a spiritual community that puts up with me even when I'm a bit annoying myself. — Carmen Renee Berry

A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we're incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve. — Austin Kleon

Because we're human beings, we're not always going to be perfect. — Benny Hinn

I'm not a perfect Muslim; I think none of us are perfect human beings. I do the five pillars of Islam, you know, I pray five times a day. — Sania Mirza

I call the years when our children are between six and twelve the "golden years," not because everything's perfect ... but because the kids are capable and independent ... They're becoming fascinating human beings who continually astound us and make us laugh. And they build our self-esteem. They still adore us for the most part, not yet having reached that age of thinking everything we do is dumb, old-fashioned and irrelevant. — Vicki Lansky

Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest. — Andrew Weil

Perfection is the exclusive attribute of God, and it is indescribable, untranslatable. I do believe that it is possible for human beings to become perfect, even as God is perfect. It is necessary for all of us to aspire after that perfection but when that blessed state is attained, it become indescribable, indefinable. — Mahatma Gandhi

I never dreamed I would be a Goodwill Ambassador, and for UNESCO. Perfect organization. It is apolitical and it's about education, science and culture. I mean that is what I live. That is what UNESCO is really about; it's all about bringing human beings together with one common goal, which is to move human kind forward. — Herbie Hancock

What said those two souls communicating through the language of the eyes, more perfect than that of the lips, the language given to the soul in order that sound may not mar the ecstasy of feeling? In such moments, when the thoughts of two happy beings penetrate into each other's souls through the eyes, the spoken word is halting, rude, and weak - it is as the harsh, slow roar of the thunder compared with the rapidity of the dazzling lightning flash, expressing feelings already recognized, ideas already understood, and if words are made use of it is only because the heart's desire, dominating all the being and flooding it with happiness, wills that the whole human organism with all its physical and psychical powers give expression to the song of joy that rolls through the soul. To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer. — Jose Rizal

But human beings are amazing like that. We're resilient. And Allah tests us with the things we love so that we can return to Him and long for His love, not the love of His creation. That was when I realized that this life isn't meant to be perfect. It's a place for test and examination. The true happiness, the true bliss, will be in the afterlife, Akhirah. That's when I hope to taste pure happiness, with no loss, no tears, ever. — Na'ima B. Robert

The perfect man sees nothing but God. — Swami Vivekananda

If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine.
What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment. — William Barrett

We must reacquaint ourselves with the biblical weight of the problem that we less-than-perfect human beings contend with in the face of a holy and righteous God. — Tullian Tchividjian

For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon - even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches. — Douglas Adams

Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect. — Fred Rogers

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed
yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings
flaws and all. — Cassandra Giovanni

Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and perceptions that find perfect expression in fiction. We are built this way, we create stories by reflex, unstoppably. But this elegant system really works best when the elements of the emerging story, whether is is being written or being read, are taken as literal fact. Almost always, to respond to the particulars of the fantastic as if they were metaphorical or allegorical is to drain them of vitality. — Peter Straub

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings. — George Eliot

The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.
More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation. — Naomi Wolf

We've had hassles, ups and downs, ins and outs, failures and triumphs. We're human beings, and we're not perfect. And we're mortal. But the Beach Boys is musically a tremendous body of work that transcends individuality and time and national boundaries. — Mike Love

Everyone had something - some fear, some shortcoming, some problem. And some people had multiples in each area. The problems were what made people human beings - they fostered compassion and encouraged growth. What would be the point if everyone was perfect? — Karen McQuestion

Many times I am asked why the suffering of animals should call forth more sympathy from me than the suffering of human beings; why I work in this direction of charitable work more than toward any other. My answer is that because I believe that this work includes all the education and lines of reform which are needed to make a perfect circle of peace and goodwill about the Earth. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The perfect human being is all human beings put together, it is a collective, it is all of us together that make perfection. — Socrates

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract. - pg. 157 — Edward O. Wilson

My favorite rule from Sensei was "Always maintain the attitude of a student." When a person thinks they have finished learning, that is when bitterness and disappointment can set in, as that person will wake up every day wondering when someone is going to throw a parade in their honor for being so smart. As human beings, we, by the definition of our very natures, can never be perfect. This means that as long as we are alive and kicking, we can be improving ourselves. — Nick Offerman

For things will never be perfect, until human beings are perfect - which I don't expect them to be for quite a number of years! — Thomas More

The idea is that the savior came, and simply by the coming of the savior you're saved. Nonsense, human beings wish! If that were the case, we'd live in a perfect world. — Frederick Lenz

For we human beings are used to inappropriate things; we are accustomed to the clatter of the incongruous; it is a tune to which we can go to sleep. If one appropriate thing happens, it wakes us up like the pang of a perfect chord. — G.K. Chesterton

There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers ... even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it. — Abraham Maslow

Ringing in the ears of evangelical theology is Martin Luther's call to distinguish between law and gospel.74 His distinction was not between the Old Testament (law) and the New Testament (gospel). Rather, law is anything in Scripture that expresses God's demands while emphasizing the inability of sinful human beings to live up to those standards (e.g., Jesus's command to be perfect as God himself is perfect; Matt. 5:48). Oppositely, gospel is anything in Scripture that expresses God's promises by emphasizing that Jesus has met all of his demands. Gospel, then, brings grace to rescue sinners awakened to their need by law. Evangelical theology, following Luther's trajectory, would profoundly disagree with Catholic theology's view of the New Law — Gregg R. Allison

There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that. — Margaret Atwood

Altered social conditions may remove certain ailments and deformities in existing society. But the new and more beautiful society will not be formed exclusively - or even mainly - by improved conditions, but above all by more perfect human beings. — Ellen Key