Human Dilemma Quotes & Sayings

If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point. Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. He will have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality he has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing. This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non-Christian epistemology — Cornelius Van Til

Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night. — Victor Hugo

The human dilemma is this: God is Holy and we are not. God is Righteous and we are not. — R.C. Sproul

The advances of science and technology will bring us to the greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham: how much to retrofit the human genotype. Shall it be a lot, a little bit, or none at all? The choice will be forced on us because our species has begun to cross what is the most important yet still least examined threshold in the technoscientific era. We are about to abandon natural selection, the process that created us, in order to direct our own evolution by volitional selection - the process of redesigning our biology and human nature as we wish them to be. — Edward O. Wilson

What blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside ... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected ... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief. — Terence McKenna

We want every human being in the womb to be safe, not have these babies be killed to solve some dilemma. — Randall Terry

The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition ... The intellectual solution to the first dilemma can be achieved by a deeper and more courageous examination of human nature that combines the findings of biology with those of the social sciences. — E. O. Wilson

There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory. — Neil Postman

Her dilemma - the eternal human dilemma - is that she wants a chance to revisit her choices with full knowledge of the future. — Laura Lippman

What is our human dilemma? That the nature of life is problematic. Problems are not an exception; they are the norm. The world offers recurring and seemingly endless conundrums for us to deal with. We cannot stop problems, but we can end our suffering, and we can achieve true, lasting happiness by understanding the nature of our mind and changing the way we approach our emotional struggles. — Karuna Cayton

The prisoner's dilemma may seem to represent a rather specific and unusual scenario, but in fact it shows up all over the place in human and animal life. It turns out, for example, to underlie arms races in international relations, inaction on climate change, obstacles to trade, and even natural phenomena such as why trees grow so tall - giant redwoods could save terrific resources by only growing to, say, 50 feet (they usually grow to over 200), but in the competition for light, whoever grows that bit taller at the expense of the others will do better. In — Dominic Johnson

Imagine you are a pregnant young woman with tuberculosis. The father of your unborn child is a short-tempered alcoholic with syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. You have already had five kids. One is blind, another died young, and a third is deaf and unable to speak. The fourth has tuberculosis - the same disease you have. What would you do in this situation? Should you consider abortion? If you chose to have the abortion, you would have ended a valuable human being - regardless of the possible difficulties it may have brought you. Fortunately, the young woman who was really in this dilemma chose life. Otherwise we would never have heard the Fifth Symphony by Beethoven, for this young woman was his mother. — Sean McDowell

Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human. — Rachel Joyce

The great dilemma of human life is that we are all strangers in a strange land. Genetically we are disposed to be communitarian. Even the worst misanthrope needs human company, hungers for it. And no matter how individualistic we are, no matter how self-motivated, other people have strange and terrible powers over us. They can fill us with joy just by saying completely stupid things like "Good job" or "You were so cool." We are so hungry for the approval of the community that a pat on the back from someone we despise still makes us feel good. Even if we're ashamed of feeling good, we feel it. It — Orson Scott Card

Each and every one of you is a sovereign human being with free will granted to you by the Maker. But he didn't leave you to wander in this life without guidance. He whispers truth to you in the face of every moral dilemma you encounter. At every turn, with every choice, you have only to listen to your conscience to know the right and just course. — David A. Wells

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts
obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts. — Jacob Bronowski

For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.
For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man's love of power. — Virginia Woolf

Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it. — Philip Kapleau

I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. To have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. — Brene Brown

I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I didn't realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. — Eckhart Tolle

The main reason for moral inconsistencies and betrayals, Ayn Rand believed, is that men have been taught to pursue ideals that are irrational and therefore impractical. Traditional virtues, such as self-sacrifice, faith, and humility, are contrary to the requirements of human life and happiness. They force men into the horrible dilemma of having to choose between virtue and happiness - between morality and life itself. — Robert James Bidinotto

You are the part of rat race because you are letting them treat you like a rat. This is the modern definition of a slave. — Saurabh Sharma

No human reality would therefore have been engendered if, thanks to a propensity that can be considered
fortunate for Hegel's system, there had not existed, from the beginning of time, two kinds of
consciousness, one of which has not the courage to renounce life and is therefore willing to recognize the
other kind of consciousness without being recognized itself in return. It consents, in short, to being
considered as an object. This type of consciousness, which, to preserve its animal existence, renounces
independent life, is the consciousness of a slave. The type of consciousness which by being recognized
achieves independence is that of the master. They are distinguished one from the other at the moment
when they clash and when one submits to the other. The dilemma at this stage is not to be free or to die,
but to kill or to enslave. This dilemma will resound throughout the course of history, though at this
moment its absurdity has not yet been resolved. — Albert Camus

The beauty myth posited to women a false choice: Which will I be, sexual or serious? We must reject that false and forced dilemma. Men's sexuality is taken to be enhanced by their seriousness; to be at the same time a serious person and a sexual being is to be fully human. Let's turn on those who offer this devil's bargain and refuse to believe that in choosing one aspect of the self we must thereby forfeit the other. In a world in which women have real choices, the choices we make about our appearance will be taken at last for what they really are: no big deal. — Naomi Wolf

... but I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution ... ..And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful. — Olive Ann Burns

People reading the Bible for the first time are often surprised to discover how much human drama it contains. Almost every conceivable human dilemma and conflict is reflected in its pages. — Billy Graham

Awareness is the main dilemma of human existence. I looked upon the professors as sages who had all the answers and upon the university as the temple of knowledge. How could an insane person like her — Eckhart Tolle

In a sense, what's happening is that the unconscious mind is a luxury the human species cannot afford at this point in our dilemma, and so the unconscious mind is simply rising into consciousness by being hardwired into this global infrastructure. — Terence McKenna

Na, we are not sincere about anything; we are serious about everything because deep down, we are afraid to loose something we don't know about. — Saurabh Sharma

Not the victims of any specific ideology of the left or of the right, but of the ideological posture as such. This has to do with the everlasting human dilemma in general: to work for a revolution and fail ... — Gerhard Richter

For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light and, alas, the blackest despair. — Victor Hugo

Na, it's not about what I say; It's about what I can't express in words. — Saurabh Sharma

Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be? — Terence McKenna

The error I found in the philosophy of Henry George was its cocksureness, its simplicity, and the small value that it placed upon the selfish motives of men. The doctrine was a hang-over from the seventeenth century in France, when the philosophers had given up the idea of God, but still thought that there must be some immovable basis for man's conduct and ideals. In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception. — Clarence Darrow

Here is my final point ... About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography ... What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, or take into my body as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet? And for those who are having a little moral dilemma in your head about how to answer that question, I'll answer it for you. NONE of your fucking business. Take that to the bank, cash it, and go fucking on a vacation out of my life. — Bill Hicks

This is theory's acute dilemma: that desire expresses itself most fully where only those absorbed in its delights and torments are present, that it triumphs most completely over other human preoccupations in places sheltered from view. Thus it is paradoxically in hiding that the secrets of desire come to light, that hegemonic impositions and their reversals, evasions, and subversions are at their most honest and active, and that the identities and disjunctures between felt passion and established culture place themselves on most vivid display. — Joan Cocks

Buttressing this argument (that you can prevent children from learning to read or ride bicycles but you can't stop them from learning to talk), Chomsky had pointed to two other universals in human language: that its emergence in children follows a very precise timetable of development, no matter where they live or which particular language is the first they learn; and that language itself has an innate structure. Chomsky has recently reminded audiences that the origins of the structure of language - how semantics and syntax interact - remain as "arcane" as do its behavioral and neurologic roots. Chomsky himself finds nothing in classical Darwinism to account for human language.* And for that reason, says Plotkin, linguistics is left with a major theoretical dilemma. If human language is a heritable trait but one that represents a complete discontinuity from animal communicative behavior, where did it come from? — Frank R. Wilson

It has come to my belated attention, due to a loop that I only recently managed to break, that, although you are undoubtedly human, and fragile, I am still fond of you. I've tried to fight it. I've asked the doctor if I can be cured or operated on, but it seems there is no cure, lobotomy, or programming solution to my dilemma but one. I need to keep you. — Eve Langlais

I want to be clear that when I used terms such as "pretense" and "intellectual dishonesty" when we first met, I wasn't casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate's dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I'm not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen. We can't say, "Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interests of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we're going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go ... Don't you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?" However, that's really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. Again, this problem confronts religious moderates everywhere, but it's an excruciating problem for Muslims. — Sam Harris

This dual position suggests a basic tension or 'existential dilemma' in human living that each of us seeks to resolve: the search for, and attempt to construct, a way of being that somehow will balance our unique reflections upon our lived experience with the perceived demands and desires of being-with-others. In this sense, the fundamental project of living, for all of us, becomes the struggle to achieve relational balance between or experience of our own self-construct, our experience of others as we have construed them to be, and our experience of that 'between-ness' that emerges through our every encounter with the world. — Ernesto Spinelli

We have trouble estimating dramatic, exponential change. We cannot conceive that a piece of paper folded over 50 times could reach the sun. There are abrupt limits to the number of cognitive categories we can make and the number of people we can truly love and the number of acquaintances we can truly know. We throw up our hands at a problem phrased in an abstract way, but have no difficulty at all solving the same problem rephrased as a social dilemma. All of these things are expressions of the peculiarities of the human mind and heart, a refutation of the notion that the way we function and communicate and process information is straightforward and transparent. It is not. It is messy and opaque. — Malcolm Gladwell

Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn't there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google....Sure, there's a certain charm to being able to look up and watch Eartha Kitt singing Old Fashioned Millionaire in 1957 at three in the morning or Hayley Mills singing a song about femininity from an old Disney film. But the charm is a kind of deception about a whole new way of feeling lonely, a semblance of plenitude but really a new level of Dante's inferno, a zombie-filled cemetery of spurious clues, beauty, pathos, pain, the faces of puppies, women and men from all over the world tied up and wanked over in site after site, a great sea of hidden shallows. More and more, the pressing human dilemma: how to walk a clean path between obscenities. — Ali Smith

remember that I am not my thoughts or my feelings - that I am actually fine, with the flu, within the existential dilemma of being human. — Robert Levithan

It's very important that people take back their minds and that people analyse our dilemma in the context of the entire human story from the descent onto the grassland to our potential destiny as citizens of the galaxy and the universe. We are at a critical turning point and, as I say; the tools, the data that holds the potential for our salvation is now known, it is available: it is among us, but it is misrepresented, it is slandered, it is litigated against, and it's up to each one of us to relate to this situation in a fashion that will allow us to answer the question that will surely be put to us at some point in the future, which is: What did you do to help save the world? — Terence McKenna