Values & belief

What have you come to understand about what it means to be human?

31 answers answered between 1991 and 2026

Originally asked

Krista Tippett, to her guests, On Being

Krista Tippett uses this as a recurring, sometimes-closing On Being question; the wording is intentionally adapted to each guest.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

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On the record

Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Oliver Sacks Neurologist and writer
My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
Recorded The New York Times, Op-Ed, 19 February 2015 source ↗
Ram Dass Spiritual teacher and author
The stroke cut out a lot of my external trips: my sports car and golf and my cello. This [ points to hand ] is just not much use with a cello, and I was—forced inside, and finding myself living in my inside. And that has made me be part of my soul. And that's perceiving my incarnation from here [ points to heart ], rather than from here [ points to head ]. And since this is words, I start from here, go over there.
Recorded Ross Simonini, The Believer, issue 115, by Skype from Hawaii, 20 November 2017 source ↗
Warren Buffett Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025
Well, I won't say what I thought about them, particularly related to Bill Gates, but I would say it's astounding to me how human people are. I mean, it, here you had a guy that was a convicted guy, a sensational con man, and the percentage of people that he knocked off. I mean, whether it was, he found their weakness, it might have been sex. It might be power, it might be, whatever it might be.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗

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