Mark Bennett > Mark's Quotes

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“The increasingly thoughtful child can see the whole horribly upset world and would be understandably totally bewildered and deeply troubled by it”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“Throughout history we humans have struggled to find meaning in the awesome contradiction of our human condition. Neither philosophy, nor psychology nor biology has, until now, been able to provide the truthful explanation.”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“What's needed on Earth is love of the dark side of ourselves”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?”
― William Blake

“The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“We humans have cooperative, selfless and loving moral instincts, the voice or expression of which we call our conscience—which is the complete opposite of competitive, selfish and aggressive instincts. As Charles Darwin said, "The moral sense… affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals.”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“A fresh approach is needed — an analysis of our human situation from a basis that recognises and confronts the psychological dimension to our behaviour”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-considerate that vehicle would be. And imagine all the money that would be saved by not having different car makers duplicating their efforts, competing and trying to out-sell each other, and overall how much time that would liberate for all those people involved in the car industry to help those less fortunate and suffering in the world. Likewise, imagine when each house is no longer designed to make an individualised, ego-reinforcing, status-symbol statement for its owners and all houses are constructed in a functionally satisfactory, simple way, how much energy, labour, time and expense will be freed up to care for the wellbeing of the less fortunate and the planet.”
― Jeremy Griffith

“Since science and religion provide two different perspectives on the human situation, they must ultimately be able to be reconciled.”
― Jeremy Griffith, Beyond the Human Condition

“While religious assurances such as 'God loves you' could comfort us, we ultimately had to understand why we are loveable”
― Jeremy Griffith, A Species in Denial

“Love is unconditional selflessness”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition

“We can transition from being victims of the human condition to becoming secure, sound, effective managers of our world”
― Jeremy Griffith, FREEDOM: The End of the Human Condition