Quotes & Sayings About Human Traits

The idea is that human culture as broadly defined
art, politics, technology, religion, and so on
evolves in much the way biological species evolve: new cultural traits arise and may flourish or perish, and as a result whole institutions can belief systems form and change. — Robert Wright

Lawyers should be chosen because they can demonstrate a history rich in human traits, the ability to care, the courage to fight, the will to win, a concern for the human condition, a passion for justice and simple uncompromising honesty. These are the traits of the lawyer. — Gerry Spence

Today [the voice of women] is being heard loud and clear. But I do not read the welcome triumph of feminism, social, economic, and creative, as a brief for postmodernism. The advance, while opening new avenues of expression and liberating deep pools of talent, has not exploded human nature into little pieces. Instead, it has set the stage for a fuller exploration of the universal traits that unite humanity. — E. O. Wilson

The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context. — Malcolm Gladwell

Villains are not fun for me to play, as such. But caricature-ish, intense behaviors that are based on real human traits are interesting. That makes an interesting story. — Sharlto Copley

Satan had two conditions [to his plan]: the first was the denial of agency, and the second, that he would have the honor. In other words, something had to be in it for him. And thus he became the father of lies and selfishness. Taking up one's cross and following the Savior means overcoming selfishness; it is a commitment to serve others. Selfishness is one of the baser human traits, which must be subdued and overcome. We torture our souls when we focus on getting rather than giving. — James E. Faust

It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. — E.B. White

For now, we assume that self-evolving robots will learn to mimic human traits, including, eventually, humor. And so, I can't wait to hear the first joke that one robot tells to another robot. — Lance Morrow

After he and this girl split up in Paris, Roger was on the town; really on the town. He joked about it and made fun of himself; but he was very angry inside for having made such a profound fool of himself and he took his talent for being faithful to people, which was the best one he had, next to the ones for painting and writing and his various good human and animal traits, and beat and belaboured that talent miserably. He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could. — Ernest Hemingway,

By comparison, the Integrated Human model of human nature, in addition to the two elements of our previous model, includes: A conscious analytic system, known as the slow brain (where logic resides) A subconscious intuitive system, or fast brain The full range of motivational drives (of which the drive to acquire is only one) Basic ideas of moral behavior, or moral intuitions Distinguishing characteristics, or personality traits Together, these elements of our nature provide all of the fundamental functions necessary for living life as a complete, Integrated Human - and they are the springboard for the development of leadership character. As our research data has shown, the ability to leverage all of these areas influence leadership's ability to achieve positive organizational outcomes. — Fred Kiel

Sometimes, humanity surprises me with all its lack of control over the primordial urges. These innate urges are the biological traits that make us similar to the rest of the animal kingdom. But the modern qualities that make us superior to all the animals are intellect and self-control. — Abhijit Naskar

Walk into any mosque, temple, church, or synagogue and you will find differing examples, different ways of interpreting God. The One True God is hard to find when a mishmash of human traits is constantly being projected. — Gudjon Bergmann

We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior. — Graydon Carter

I might have some character traits that some might see as innocence or naive. That's because I discovered peace and happiness in my soul. And with this knowledge, I also see the beauty of human life. — Tobey Maguire

Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary. — Jean Baker Miller

From different perspectives, I will show how political orientations across space and time arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits. The three clusters entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests. — Avi Tuschman

Mourning is one of the most profound human experiences that it is possible to have ... The deep capacity to weep for the loss of a loved one and to continue to treasure the memory of that loss is one of our noblest human traits. — Edwin S. Shneidman

Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs. — Arthur Evans

In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool. — Derek R. Audette

Mental indolence is one of the commonest of human traits — Anonymous

If Europe had been blessed with more rulers with the human heart and the traits of honesty of ex-king Edward, for the past century, that unfortunate hemisphere now seething with greed, hate, lust, political connivance, and threats of war, would have a different and a better story to tell. A story in which Love and not Hate would rule. In — Napoleon Hill

LOVE Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In logotherapy, — Viktor E. Frankl

The dread of a permanently wicked human nature takes two forms. One is a practical fear: that social reform is a waste of time because human nature is unchangeable. The other is a deeper concern, which grows out of the Romantic belief that what is natural is good. According to the worry, if scientists suggest it is "natural" - part of human nature - to be adulterous, violent, ethnocentric, and selfish, they would be implying that these traits are good, not just unavoidable. — Steven Pinker

If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, inter changeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person's uniqueness - the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable - that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society. — Murray N. Rothbard

I don't think there's any reason in journalism not to approach stories we cover with humility, empathy, compassion, and intellectual openness. I mean, I think those are just important human traits. I don't think that precludes scrutiny, negativity, where it's appropriate. — David Gregory

Incase the title was misleading, this is the story of Qorth. He was an alien, but he was more normal, more boring, more goofy, and more ho-hum than any human I'd ever known . . . to the point that I sometimes wonder if he was really even an alien. To be fair, he did have "magical" otherworldly powers and some weird traits, like pointed ears. It rained when he was sad. His eyes were solid black, which really creeped me out in the beginning but, eh, I got used to it. He had weird tastes in food, like he would put ketchup on pancakes, and animals were sock puppets to him. The night I found him, it was the animals who led me to him. — Ash Gray

In the beginning of the human race there was no genetic load which would cause undesirable traits such as appear in offspring of marriages between relatives today. — Walter Lang

So that while others may look on the laws of physics as legislation and God as a human form with beard measured in light-years and double for sandals, Faust's kind (poets) are alone with the task of living in a universe of things which simply are, and cloaking that innate mindlessness with comfortable and pious metaphor so that the "practical" half of humanity may continue in the Great Lie, confident that their machines, dwellings, streets and weather share the same human motives, personal traits and fits of contrariness as they. — Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness. — Kate Millett

we are not born to these traits; we are either called to them, or not. They beckon to us to be engaged, but the engagement is a decision point reached by an inclination to accept a higher calling to overcome the natural, human tendencies of all dishonorable and freedom-robbing traits that combat true character. — Jukebox Publishers

Havin' fun while freedom fightin' must be one of those lunatic Texas traits we get from the water - which is known to have lithium in it - because it goes all the way back to Sam Houston, surely the most lovable, the most human, and the funniest of all the great men this country has ever produced. — Molly Ivins

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities. — Emma Goldman

To get from "protoplasmal primordial atomic globule" (as Gilbert and Sullivan put it) to sentient upright modern human has required you to mutate new traits over and over in a precisely timely manner for an exceedingly long while. — Bill Bryson

Many of these policies were proposed by wonks who are comfortable only with traits and correlations that can be measured and quantified. They were passed through legislative committees that are as capable of speaking about the deep wellsprings of human action as they are of speaking in ancient Aramaic. They were executed by officials that have only the most superficial grasp of what is immovable and bent about human beings. So of course they failed. And they will continue to fail unless the new knowledge about our true makeup is integrated more fully into the world of public policy, unless the enchanted story is told along with the prosaic one. — David Brooks

It might not be about perfection. Rather, it may be that that which is imperfect is that which has the most character. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness. — Rutherford B. Hayes

The human race, for all our facets and our institutional stupidity, is something I believe in. I admire our diversity, our stubbornness. The dynamic of conflict is one of our greatest traits. — Peter F. Hamilton

Although the Singularity has many faces, its most important implication is this: our technology will match and then vastly exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best of human traits. — Ray Kurzweil

Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Another basic characteristic of liberalism which constitutes a formidable obstacle to an oppressed group's liberation is its conception of human nature. If selfishness, aggressiveness, the drive to conquer and dominate, really are among defining human traits, as every liberal philosopher since Locke tries to convince us, the oppression in civil society - i.e. in the social sphere not regulated by the state - is a fact of life, and the basic civil relationship between a man and a women will always remain a battlefield. Woman, being less aggressive, is then either the less human of the two and doomed to subjugation, or else she must get more power-hungry herself and try to dominate man. Liberation for both is not feasible. — Mihailo Markovic

The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities. — Eric Hoffer

I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride. — Robert Greene

How easily we accept the fact that this is a varied world, with many races, cultures, and mores. In America we rejoice in this diversity, this pluralism, which makes up the rich pattern of our national being. We should learn to accept this pluralism in ourselves, to rejoice in the truth that we human being consist of a variety of moods, impulses, traits, and emotions ... If we become pluralistic in thinking about ourselves, we shall learn to take the depressed mood or the cruel mood or the uncooperative mood for what is, one of many, fleeting, not permanent. As pluralists we take ourselves for worse as well as for better, cease demanding a brittle perfection which can lead only to inner despair. There are facets of failure in every person's makeup and there are elements of success. Both must be accepted while we try to emphasize the latter through self-knowledge. — Joshua Loth Liebman

I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our 'noble' traits as well? — Stephen Jay Gould

I think that this place can strip a person of human traits. It can make one desire nothing and hope for even less. — Gemma Liviero

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. — Viktor E. Frankl

Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down
toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth. — Carl Sagan

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large. — Mark Twain

Many things change with time, but certain basic human traits remain eternal: curiosity and empathy, the urge to know and the urge to connect. — Azar Nafisi

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. — Georg Brandes

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

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it," said the expendable.
"Meaning I gave you what you wanted?"
"Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked. — Orson Scott Card

Nevertheless, let no one boast. Just as every man, though he be the greatest genius, has very definite limitations in some one sphere of knowledge, and thus attests his common origin with the essentially perverse and stupid mass of mankind, so also has every man something in his nature which is positively evil. Even the best, nay the noblest, character will sometimes surprise us by isolated traits of depravity; as though it were to acknowledge his kinship with the human race, in which villainy
nay, cruelty
is to be found in that degree. — Arthur Schopenhauer

On the contrary, every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous vestiges of earlier evolutionary stages going back even to the reptilian age, so the human psyche is a product of evolution which, when followed back to its origins, shows countless archaic traits. — C. G. Jung

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

In his book Human Universals, Donald E. Brown lists traits that people in all places share. The list goes on and on. All children fear strangers and prefer sugar solutions to plain water from birth. All humans enjoy stories, myths, and proverbs. In all societies men engage in more group violence and travel farther from home than women. In all societies, husbands are on average older than their wives. People everywhere rank one another according to prestige. People everywhere divide the world between those inside their group and those outside their group. These tendencies are all stored deep below awareness. — David Brooks

Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost - or might lose - defined him more than the things he yet possessed. — David Anthony Durham

Last days? Don't they know? These are the traits of all days, every day, everywhere. — Paul Theroux

By the time you've had a relationship with a horse for a while, there are characteristics in the way the horse behaves with you and around you and responds to you that are directly (related) to some of your traits as a human being ... whether it's insecurity or aggression or fear or hate. — Buck Brannaman

Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.
What makes us human is not one or the other - the fist or the open palm - it's our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we're in. Because to deny one half - to burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it - is to deny our humanity and become something less than human. — Kameron Hurley

Banning human cloning reflects our humanity. It is the right thing to do. Creating a child through this new method calls into question our most fundamental beliefs. It has the potential to threaten the sacred family bonds at the very core of our ideals and our society. At its worst, it could lead to misguided and malevolent attempts to select certain traits, even to create certain kind of children
to make our children objects rather than cherished individuals. — William J. Clinton

About the book of Job: If it were today, God might be asking How does DNA carry traits? How are instincts passed on in animals? How does consciousness arise in the human body and brain, and what is consciousness? What is dark matter? How did the big bang happen? Why does the speed of light appear to be absolute? Is cold fusion possible? How do you program a TV remote control? — Brian D. McLaren

Whenever someone brings up the traits associated with being a functional human otherwise known as an "adult," I think, is this even possible for me? Probably not, is what I conclude. I mean, I'll eventually pay off my college loans at the age of forty-five by selling what's left of my liver, and I'll probably manage to find sustenance and remember to breathe oxygen constantly. I'll survive. However, for people like me ... There will be years of struggle to keep myself afloat. — Alida Nugent

It is rarely possible, when a human being is in deep need, to look upon somebody who offers help as merely another flawed human being with whom one is going to engage in a protracted conversation. A kind of wild idealization sets in, and we imagine the person in whom we confide to possess ineffable and valuable traits beyond those attainable by ordinary mortals. We ascribe value, and project qualities onto this person that almost never correspond with reality. It is a little bit like falling in love - powerful emotions are called forth. It takes a strong person not to exploit the ensuing power imbalance. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The takeaway message here, as Jablonski points out, is that there is no such thing as different races of humans. Any differences we traditionally associate with race are a product of our need for vitamin D and our relationship to the Sun. Just a few clusters of genes control skin color; the changes in skin color are recent; they've gone back and forth with migrations; they are not the same even among two groups with similarly dark skin; and they are tiny compared to the total human genome. So skin color and "race" are neither significant nor consistent defining traits. We all descended from the same African ancestors, with little genetic separation from each other. The different colors or tones of skin are the result of an evolutionary response to ultraviolet light in local environments. Everybody has brown skin tinted by the pigment melanin. Some people have light brown skin. Some people have dark brown skin. But we all are brown, brown, brown. — Bill Nye

We know from the truths of evolution and ecology that we are all related and interdependent. Anthropomorphism (crediting animals with human emotions and traits) is, however, outdated. Rather we know that we are like animals. — Michael Fox

The first generations of Comanches in captivity never really understood the concept of wealth, of private property. The central truth of their lives was the past, the dimming memory of the wild, ecstatic freedom of the plains, of the days when Comanche warriors in black buffalo headdresses rode unchallenged from Kansas to northern Mexico, of a world without property or boundaries. What Quanah had that the rest of his tribe in the later years did not was that most American of human traits: boundless optimism. — S.C. Gwynne

There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe. — Joshua Foer

There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency - which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours - to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Whatever cosmic attraction had drawn [Jess & Addie] to one another in the first place was beginning to fill in with the chinks and mortar of very real, very likeable human traits. — Bailey Bristol

Rather than being medicalized or romanticized, mental disorders, or mental dis-eases, should be understood as nothing less or more than what they are, an expression of our deepest human nature. By recognizing their traits in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able both to contain them and to put them to good use. This is, no doubt, the highest form of genius. — Neel Burton

If your coworkers are great, encouraging people, then it's most likely going to rub off on you. But if they're miserable, negative human beings, you'll probably notice yourself adopting some of those traits. It's hard to be the one shining light in a sea of darkness, and eventually the light can burn out. — Andrew Bernauer

Humankind is an instinctive creature that is capable of feelings and rational thoughts, which accounts for why such a rich diversity exists amongst human nature. A person's unique personality is simply a crystallization of particular aspects of human nature. Freedom of thought and expression ensures that no person replicates another person's exact persona. Every person is a creature of predicable needs and impulses, infused with the poetry of multifaceted feelings, and ruled by a scientifically calculated instrument capable of precision of thought. — Kilroy J. Oldster

THE MEANING OF LOVE Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come — Viktor E. Frankl

Carlisle has a theory ... he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified - like our minds, and our senses. — Stephenie Meyer

We can pretend all we like that women are equal, ut as long as men and women are continually encouraged to supress the broad aspects of their humanity that we decry as "feminine", we're all screwed.
Because it's those things qe celebrate as "other" that make us truly human. It's what we label "soft" or "feminune" that makes civilization possible, It's our empathy, our ability to care and nurtureand connect. It's our ability to come together. To buld. To remake. Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to supress ther "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy. — Kameron Hurley

Humanism is not a single character. It is a magnificent blend of various emotional and behavioral traits that are unique to the human mind. — Abhijit Naskar

I admit it: I am louder than the average human being and have no fear of speaking my mind. These traits don't come from the color of my skin but from an unwavering belief in my own intelligence. — Michelle Obama

In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population. The products of the opposing two vectors in natural selection are hardwired in our emotions and reasoning, and cannot be erased. Internal conflict is not a personal irregularity but a timeless human quality. No such conflict exists or can exist in an eagle, fox, or spider, for example, whose traits were born solely of individual selection, or a worker ant, whose social traits were shaped entirely by group selection. — Edward O. Wilson

For the young, the practice of equitation is a valuable lesson, as it requires the exercise of all human virtue. If they are introduced to the practice of riding by understanding and patient teachers, then they too will develop these traits. The young rider grows to realize the horse is a partner rather than a slave who also deserves love and understanding. — Nuno Oliveira

All of us, when it comes to personality, naturally think in terms of absolutes: that a person is a certain way or is not a certain way. But what Zimbardo and Hartshorne and May are suggesting is that this is a mistake, that when we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we're deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior. — Malcolm Gladwell

Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.
But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone. — Joel Derfner

I think human beings have a really broad spectrum of traits, and I almost feel implicated when we say, 'Men are like this, women are like this.' Nobody was telling me, 'Don't get dirty, don't play in the mud, girls don't do that.' — St. Vincent

Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born. — G. Stanley Hall

The term 'race' has deliberately been placed within inverted commas in order to stress that it is not a scientific term. Whereas it was for some time fashionable to divide humanity into four main races, and racial labels are still used to classify people in some countries (such as the USA), modern genetics tends not to speak of races. There are two principal reasons for this. First, there has always been so much interbreeding between human populations that it would be meaningless to talk of fixed boundaries between races. Second, the distribution of hereditary physical traits does not follow clear boundaries (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994). In other — Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Wherever one encounters members of the human race, they always show the traits of a being that is condemned to surrealistic effort. Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats. — Peter Sloterdijk

One of the most unattractive human traits, and so easy to fall into, is resentment at the sudden shared popularity of a previously private pleasure. Which of us hasn't been annoyed when a band, writer, artist or television series that had been a minority interest of ours has suddenly achieved mainstream popularity? When it was at a cult level we moaned at the philistinism of a world that didn't appreciate it, and now that they do appreciate it we're all resentful and dog-in-the-manger about it. — Stephen Fry

Stories teach us empathy, and limiting the expression of humanity in our heroes entirely based on sex or gender does us all a disservice. It placess restrictions on what we consider human, which dehumanizes the people we see who do not express traits that fit our narow definition of what's acceptable. — Kameron Hurley

First of all, most traders don't have a winning strategy. Second, even among those traders who do, many don't follow their strategy. Trading puts pressure on weaker human traits and seems to seek out each individual's Achilles' heel. — Gil Blake

Theres a lot of muscles in your eyes even that you dont ever work, but little human traits like showing signs of exertion while running, you couldnt do that. Blinking when youre shooting a gun, you know. Things that you take for granted every day that had to be eliminated, so it was always interesting. — Kristanna Loken

Empathy is a human trait. But lots of humans exercise some traits more energetically than others. By "the usefulness of empathy" I mean the way in which a progressive might claim that empathy is a crucial aspect of any benign political system, and the way a conservative might argue that not only is it not necessary, but it might not even be all that helpful, in that regard. — Jim Shepard

We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity
advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary ... we have arrived at a point from which we must seek a basis of faith in connection
and not only faith but recognition that it is a requirement for the existence of human beings. — Gary Paul Nabhan Stephan Trimble

Think of all the human suffering caused by the sad truth that beautiful sexy women or handsome Porsche-owning men often prove to have miserable genes for other traits — Jared Diamond

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human. — Albert Ellis

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community. — Orson Scott Card

Quite a number of writers comment on the decidedly human character of the fairies, but it must be obvious that practically all supernaturals partake of human traits, more usually unpleasant ones, being as they are the projections of man's fear and imagination and created by him, psychologically, in his own image. Fairies are frequently described as being peevish, irritable, and revengeful to a degree. Grant Stewart says rather unmercifully of the Scottish fairies that their appetites are as keen as their inclinations are corrupt and wicked. — Lewis Spence

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws. — Denise Mina

Have suggested throughout this book that the New Testament itself answers the first half of each of these prayers in terms, primarily, of a clear list of character traits whose radical novelty is generated from within the life, vision, achievement, death, and resurrection of Jesus himself. These events, taken together, constitute Jesus's followers as the true, image-bearing human beings, the royal priesthood. I have proposed, further, that according to the New Testament the way God the Holy Spirit answers the second half of the prayer is by renewing the individual heart and mind so that we can freely and consciously choose to practice those habits of behavior which, awkward and clumsy at first, will gradually become second nature. — N. T. Wright