„Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.“

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Origine: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

The opening phrase of this chapter after which the chapter is named in Chinese.
Originale: (zh_Hant) 里仁為美、擇不處仁、焉得知。
Origine: The Analects, Chapter IV

The Quotable Sir John
Contesto: The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.

"Kafka in the Present Day", originally published in [London] Sunday Times (1983)
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)
Contesto: Human beings today … are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.

Reported in Proceedings in honor of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and distinguished alumni at the meeting of the Council, Harvard Law School Association in Cambridge, April 30, 1960.
Other writings

The character "Luka" in The Lower Depths (1902) English translation by Laurence Irving (1912)
Contesto: Some one has to be kind, girl — some one has to pity people! Christ pitied everybody — and he said to us: "Go and do likewise!" I tell you — if you pity a man when he most needs it, good comes of it. Why — I used to be a watchman on the estate of an engineer near Tomsk — all right — the house was right in the middle of a forest — lonely place — winter came — and I remained all by myself. Well — one night I heard a noise — thieves creeping in! I took my gun — I went out. I looked and saw two of them opening a window — and so busy that they didn't even see me. I yell: "Hey there — get out of here!" And they turn on me with their axes — I warn them to stand back, or I'd shoot — and as I speak, I keep on covering them with my gun, first on the one, then the other — they go down on their knees, as if to implore me for mercy. And by that time I was furious — because of those axes, you see — and so I say to them: "I was chasing you, you scoundrels — and you didn't go. Now you go and break off some stout branches!" — and they did so — and I say: "Now — one of you lie down and let the other one flog him!" So they obey me and flog each other — and then they began to implore me again. "Grandfather," they say, "for God's sake give us some bread! We're hungry!" There's thieves for you, my dear! [Laughs. ] And with an ax, too! Yes — honest peasants, both of them! And I say to them, "You should have asked for bread straight away!" And they say: "We got tired of asking — you beg and beg — and nobody gives you a crumb — it hurts!" So they stayed with me all that winter — one of them, Stepan, would take my gun and go shooting in the forest — and the other, Yakoff, was ill most of the time — he coughed a lot... and so the three of us together looked after the house... then spring came... "Good-bye, grandfather," they said — and they went away — back home to Russia... escaped convicts — from a Siberian prison camp... honest peasants! If I hadn't felt sorry for them — they might have killed me — or maybe worse — and then there would have been a trial and prison and afterwards Siberia — what's the sense of it? Prison teaches no good — and Siberia doesn't either — but another human being can... yes, a human being can teach another one kindness — very simply!

I–II, q. 2, art. 8
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)
Contesto: Now the object of the will, i. e., of man's appetite, is the universal good... Hence it is evident that nothing can lull the human will but the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone; because every creature has goodness by participation. Thus God alone can satisfy the will of a human being.

From the official website

Origine: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Alesha Dixon cited in Dixon tipped for Strictly success http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7156420.stm at bbc.co.uk, 22 December, 2007: Referring bookmakers favourite to win BBC One's ballroom show Strictly Come Dancing.

Speech at the Nobel Banquet https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-speech_en.html (10 December 2015)

Origine: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

State Department ceremony (2009-01-26), quoted in Robert Burns, "Obama's Mideast envoy brings record of patience," http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i1hWov8APjI96ba4coEYQeeoavbAD95V7SK80 Associated Press (2009-01-27)

L'esprit humain se plaît à ces conceptions grandioses d'êtres surnaturels. Or la mer est précisément leur meilleur véhicule, le seul milieu où ces géants près desquels les animaux terrestres, éléphants ou rhinocéros, ne sont que des nains — puissent se produire et se développer.
Part I, ch. II: Pro and Con
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man [Le Phénomène Humain] (1955); Covey quotes this in Living the 7 Habits : Stories of Courage and Inspiration (2000), p. 47
Variant: We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
A paraphrase of De Chardin's statement which has also become misattributed to Covey.
Misattributed
Variante: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.