Human Determination Quotes

The space program is not only scientific in purpose but also is an expression of man's insistent determination to do the nearly impossible - to explore the unknown, even at great risk.

How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.

It is not for the gods to decide whether or not Man exists - it is for Man to decide whether or not the gods exist.

The only progress which is really effective depends, not upon the bounty of nature, but upon the energy of man.

Nothing is so difficult but that man will accomplish it.

[Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

No conjunction can possibly occur, however fearful, however tremendous it may appear, from which a man by his own energy may not extricate himself, as a mariner by the rattling of his cannon can dissipate the impending waterspout.

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

Whether we athletes liked it or not, the 4-minute mile had become rather like an Everest: a challenge to the human spirit, it was a barrier that seemed to defy all attempts to break it, an irksome reminder that men's striving might be in vain.

Sully's' upbeat message is that we still need humans. It was the heroically human Sully who saved those people, not some cold equation written on a chalkboard.

Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.

We will cry and bleed and lust and love, and we will cure death. We will be the cure. Because we want it.