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

M. H. Abrams Literature See all quotes by M. H. Abrams →

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More by M. H. Abrams

“When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that.”

“John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. I like to read Archie Ammons, my great friend. And Harold Bloom, another former student.”

“The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.”

“The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.”

“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.”

“I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos."

— Olaf Stapledon

Literature1886–1950

#Human Nature

"Conclusion: Because humanity has entered a new era of science and industry, Ecumenopolis is as inevitable as the village after the agricultural revolution."

— Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis

1913–1975

#Human Nature

"Large number of tribes, Dalits and Backward Castes have a historical food culture of beef. The anti-beef agenda has been in the Brahmanical fold. It began with the South Indian Brahmins and then sprea…"

— Kancha Ilaiah

Science1952

#Human Nature

"Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us. When we do include them, they add richly to our lives and add immensely to our…"

— Jean Vanier

Philosophy1928–2019

#Human Nature