Human Sensitivity Quotes & Sayings

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. — Alan W. Watts

You're too sensitive' victims of sexual abuse are told over and over by those whose reality depends on being insensitive. Most adults who have been in the victim role cringe when anyone tells them they are sensitive. In fact, sensitivity is a lovely trait and one to be cherished in any human being. — Renee Fredrickson

And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind. — Carl Sagan

While the human gaze becomes more and more fixed, losing some of its natural speed and sensitivity, photographic shots, on the contrary, become even faster. — Paul Virilio

One must die lovable (if one can). You are moved by this sentence, especially by the words in parentheses, which demonstrate a rare sensitivity of spirit, you feel, a hard-won understanding of how difficult it is to be lovable, especially for someone who is old, who is sinking into decrepitude and must be cared for by others. If one can. There is probably no greater human achievement than to be lovable at the end, — Paul Auster

My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians. — Rajneesh

We must ask why apparently general musical abilities should be restricted to a chosen few in societies supposed to be culturally more advanced. Does cultural development represent a real advance in human sensitivity, or is it chiefly a diversion for elites and a weapon of class exploitation? — John Blacking

yet to be moved by music is essentially human; it reflects sensitivity. The life Gregor led as a human being left no room for this kind of appreciation. But, regressing into an animal, his sensibility has become refined rather than coarsened. — Franz Kafka

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways ... It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being. — John Connolly

How do we know that Moses was grown up? Because he went out unto his brethren, and was ready to bear the burdens and share the plight of his people. Maturity is sensitivity to human suffering. — Julius Gordon

Spirituality is not just about religion, or church attendance, or fidelity to one or other legal requirement. Spirituality is understood to be an innate wisdom of the human heart that enlivens a zest for life, a search for meaning and purpose, a love for all that is good and beautiful, a passion to create a better world, a sensitivity to the life-energy (God, if you wish) that permeates the entire cosmos. — Diarmuid O'Murchu

I feel that most gay men are so much more in touch with a certain kind of sensitivity that heterosexual men aren't allowed to be in touch with, their feminine side. To me they're whole human beings, more so than most of the straight men that I know. — Madonna Ciccone

Although the pure truth has never been stated, nevertheless it has never been lost. Its existence does not depend upon human statement but upon human sensitivity. In this it is unlike all other knowledge. — Paul Brunton

Dreams provide a kind of wisdom of the heart, an echoing voice of a profound human sensitivity too often lost to us in the reasonable life of days. — Sheldon B. Kopp

I have now transformed into a sensitive; a person who is able to detect when spirits are present. It's a skill that's evolved over hundreds of paranormal investigations and has taught me that the human body is the best means of paranormal detection. I've become a fine-tuned instrument of spiritual sensitivity. — Zak Bagans

Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A human being was connected to the world through his or her skin and how could someone with clogged pores feel the environment or be sensitive to its vibrations? — Fatema Mernissi

A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street. — George Carlin

Education tends to be diagrammatic and categorical, opening up no sluices in the human imagination on the wonder of the beauty of our unique estate in the cosmos. Little wonder that it becomes so easy for our young to regard human hurt casually or to be uninspired by the magic of sensitivity. — Norman Cousins

Legend claimed Berserkers could move with such speed that they seemed invisible to the human eye until the moment they attacked. They possessed unnatural senses: the olfactory acuity of a wolf, the auditory sensitivity of a bat, the strength of twenty men, the penetrating eyesight of an eagle. The Berserkers had once been the most fearless and feared warriors ever to walk Scotland nearly seven hundred years ago. They had been Odin's elite Viking army. Legend claimed they could assume the shape of a wolf or a bear as easily as the shape of a man. And they were marked by a common feature-unholy blue eyes that glowed like banked coals. — Karen Marie Moning

Thin skin is the only kind of skin human beings come with. — Meg Greenfield

Learn to laugh. Seriousness is a sin, and it is a disease. Laughter has tremendous beauty, a lightness. It will bring lightness to you, and it will give you wings to fly. And life is so full of opportunities. You just need the sensitivity. And create chances for other people to laugh. Laughter should be one of the most valued, cherished qualities of human beings - because only man can laugh, no animals are capable of it. Because it is human, it must be of the highest order. To repress it is to destroy a human quality. — Rajneesh

Every man is sensitive. Some cover it up with brutality, others with cowardice and vanity, but a small few wear it bravely like armor — Solange Nicole

The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either. — Steven Pressfield

Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence. — Rollo May

We are taught to believe that the 'alienation' that we experience sometimes, when we withdraw from everything or feel alone, is a craving for something sexual, material, or in the physical - and can be cured by popping a pill in most cases. When in Truth, it's the circuitry within our souls and minds that is hinting to be connected - to real flowing energy - outside of our TVs and computer monitors. What many of us mistaken for depression is actually a need to be understood, or to see desires come to fruition. There is absolutely nothing abnormal about feeling disconnected. Your sensitivity only means you are more human than most. If you cry, you are alive. I'd be more worried if you didn't. — Suzy Kassem

The human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty. — James Redfield

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings. (p. 16-17) — Rollo May

Jesus was no cold Superman - he was more human than any of us. Entirely pure, unweakened by evil, he was loving and open to the core. His ardor, truth, sensitivity, power, capacity for joy and pain were unlimited, and everything that happened to him happened in the immeasurableness of his divinity. — Romano Guardini

Public concern for the environment cannot be addressed by placing the blame on growth without spelling out the causes of growth. Nor can an explanation be exhausted by citing "consumerism" while ignoring the sinister role played by rival producers in shaping public taste and guiding public purchasing power. Aside from the costs involved, most people quite rightly do not want to "live simply." They do not want to diminish their freedom to travel or their access to culture, or to scale down needs that often serve to enrich human personality and sensitivity. — Murray Bookchin

I ... believe the study of human history remains important and should not be banned. We should ensure that any archaeological studies are conducted with sensitivity and respect. Reburying relics, in my view, does not help anyone go anywhere. — Richard Leakey

To live in love is life's greatest challenge. It requires more sublety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge and strength than any other human endeavor. — Leo Buscaglia

I have seen human beings who have forged "intellectual" armor to shield themselves from adversity. They seemed stronger than most. They said, "I couldn't care less," and laughed at everything, but when adversity managed to pierce their armor, it caused terrible damage.
I have seen human beings suffer from the slightest adversity, the slightest annoyance, but still remain open-minded and sensitive to everything, learning something from each attack. — Bernard Werber

The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human ... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance. — Pope John Paul II

It is only through such real-life daily struggles and challenges that a genuine sensitivity to human rights can be inculcated. This is a truth that is not limited to school education: it applies to all of us. — Daisaku Ikeda

Kindness is gracious demonstrate sensitivity and human warmth. — Kishore Bansal

A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three ... These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect. — Swami Kriyananda

If we do not appreciate the sensitivity and subtlety of the human heart, how can we appreciate the sensitivity and subtlety of the natural world? — Sakyong Mipham

What really has expanded is not so much a circle of empathy as a circle of rights - a commitment that other living things, no matter how distant or dissimilar, be safe from harm and exploitation. Empathy has surely been historically important in setting off epiphanies of concern for members of overlooked groups. But the epiphanies are not enough. For empathy to matter, it must goad changes in policies and norms that determine how the people in those groups are treated. At these critical moments, a newfound sensitivity to the human costs of a practice may tip the decisions of elites and the conventional wisdom of the masses. But as we shall see in the section on reason, abstract moral argumentation is also necessary to overcome the built-in strictures on empathy. The ultimate goal should be policies and norms that become second nature — Steven Pinker

It is also only in humans that aggression may be used to commit crimes, to enslave others or compel acquiescence to religious or ideological doctrine, or to pursue wars of national interest. At the individual level, men are universally more aggressive than women, and rates of aggressive confrontation are greatest among those who are young, poor, or unmarried. Cultural factors moderate human aggression as well, with men's heightened sensitivity to signs of disrespect, challenge, or threat spawning a high frequency of confrontational violence in so-called "cultures of honor". — Randy J. Nelson

Telepathy' literally means to feel at a distance, just as 'telephone' is to hear at a distance and 'television' is to see at a distance. The word suggests the communication not of thoughts but of feelings, emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they've experienced something like telepathy. People who know each other very well, who live together, who are practised in one another's feeling tones, associations and thinking styles can often anticipate what the partner will say. This is merely the usual five senses plus human empathy, sensitivity and intelligence in operation. It may feel extrasensory, but it's not at all what's intended by the word 'telepathy'. If something like this were ever conclusively demonstrated, it would, I think, have discernible physical causes -perhaps electrical currents in the brain. Pseudoscience, rightly or wrongly labelled, is by no means the same thing as the supernatural, which is by definition something somehow outside of Nature. — Carl Sagan

Everywhere on Earth, at this moment, in the new spiritual atmosphere created by the appearance of the idea of evolution, there float, in a state of extreme mutual sensitivity, love of God and faith in the world: the two essential components of the Ultra-human. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin