The Modern Human Quotes
Words worth looking up for.
Ideas about attention, connection, technology + the complicated business of being human.
93 quotes
“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
William James
The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Ch. XI, 1890
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Simone Weil
Letter to Joë Bousquet, 13 April 1942
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Herbert A. Simon
Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, 1971
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”
Henry David Thoreau
Walden, 'Where I Lived, and What I Lived For', 1854
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
Henry David Thoreau
Walden, 'Where I Lived, and What I Lived For', 1854
“Technology changed. Human needs didn't.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”
Henry David Thoreau
Letter to H. G. O. Blake, 1841
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance, Essays: First Series, 1841
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship, Essays: First Series, 1841
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca
Letters to Lucilius, Letter XIII
“We don't need to live without technology. We need to remember how to live alongside it.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
Seneca
On the Shortness of Life, De Brevitate Vitae, I
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations, Book V, 16
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.”
Epictetus
Enchiridion, Section 5
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal
Pensées, Fragment 139
“Being reachable all the time is not the same thing as being connected.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men.”
Bertrand Russell
The Conquest of Happiness, Ch. 4, 1930
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own, 1929
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry.”
Oscar Wilde
De Profundis, Written 1897, published 1905
“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”
George Orwell
In Front of Your Nose, Tribune, 22 March 1946
“Attention is one of the quietest ways we decide what matters.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus
Return to Tipasa, 1952
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
Albert Camus
The Rebel, 1951
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung
Letters, Vol. I, Letter to Fanny Bowditch, 22 October 1916
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.”
Carl Jung
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962
“Sometimes the healthiest digital boundary isn't less technology. It's knowing what you don't want technology to replace.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning, 1946
“The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Viktor Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning, 1946
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character.”
Erich Fromm
The Art of Loving, 1956
“Children don't need adults who understand every new platform. They need adults who remain curious about the world they're growing up in.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
Abraham Maslow
The Psychology of Science, 1966
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
Carl Rogers
On Becoming a Person, 1961
“Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process.”
John Dewey
Democracy and Education, 1916
“Not every empty moment needs somewhere to go.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I did not exist.'”
Maria Montessori
The Absorbent Mind, 1949
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning.”
Fred Rogers
Mister Rogers Talks with Parents, 1983
“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Fred Rogers
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Widely broadcast remark recalling his mother's advice
“A phone can fill almost every pause in a day. That doesn't mean every pause needed filling.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”
John M. Culkin
A Schoolman's Guide to Marshall McLuhan, The Saturday Review, 18 March 1967
“We are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”
Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985
“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”
Sherry Turkle
Alone Together, 2011
“The goal isn't to raise children who avoid technology. It's to raise humans who know themselves well enough to use it intentionally.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
As Much Truth As One Can Bear, The New York Times, 14 January 1962
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.”
James Baldwin
Nothing Personal, 1964
“Connection has become incredibly easy to initiate and surprisingly difficult to feel.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver
The Summer Day, House of Light, 1990
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Mary Oliver
Sometimes, Red Bird, 2008
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong.”
Wendell Berry
The Long-Legged House, 1969
“Digital well-being isn't about winning a battle against your phone. It's about noticing what you want your phone to make room for.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
Rachel Carson
Silent Spring, 1962
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it.”
Rachel Carson
The Sense of Wonder, 1965
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
John Muir
John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals, Journal entry, 1877
“One of the most useful questions we can ask about technology isn't 'How much?' but 'What is this replacing?'”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“I want first of all to be at peace with myself.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Gift from the Sea, 1955
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Anaïs Nin
Seduction of the Minotaur, 1961
“Being offline isn't the goal. Being present enough to choose is.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince, Ch. XXI, 1943
“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.”
David Foster Wallace
This Is Water, Kenyon College commencement address, 2005
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline.”
David Foster Wallace
This Is Water, Kenyon College commencement address, 2005
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
National Book Awards acceptance speech, 19 November 2014
“Your attention doesn't have to be perfectly protected. It does need somewhere to rest.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven, 1971
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions, 2000
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
Brené Brown
Listening to Shame, TED2012
“Sometimes what looks like a screen problem is actually a connection problem.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Connection is why we're here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection, 2010
“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.”
Oliver Sacks
My Own Life, The New York Times, 19 February 2015
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”
Daniel Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011
“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition.”
Daniel Kahneman
Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011
“Modern life gives us endless ways to avoid being bored. We may want to be careful about losing boredom entirely.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
“The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
Reason for Hope, 1999
“In an age of speed, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.”
Pico Iyer
The Art of Stillness, 2014
“Technology can extend human connection beautifully. It just shouldn't have to carry all of it.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Movement makes richest sense when set within a frame of stillness.”
Pico Iyer
The Art of Stillness, 2014
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard
The Writing Life, 1989
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne
Essays, Book I, 'Of Solitude', 1580
“It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”
D. W. Winnicott
The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965
“Kids are learning how to be human and how to be digital at the same time. They need guidance with both.”
Sian Trombley
Therapist + Founder, The Modern Human
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”
Iris Murdoch
The Sublime and the Good, 1959
“Boredom is that state of suspended anticipation in which things are started and nothing begins.”
Adam Phillips
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, 1993
Every attributed quotation in this library is checked against a published book, essay, speech, letter or documented interview before it appears here. Where wording or attribution could not be reasonably verified, the quotation was left out.