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Humanity Quotes


"And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'thou mayest'."


"You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything."


"Our values call upon us to care about people we'll never meet."


"It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it."



"Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States."


"For how can any human be separate from humanity and humanness?"


"Still humanity is in her infancy, so often we engage in fighting to destroy ourself."


"Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general."


"But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people..."


"He was glad to be human. For sure, it was a great inconvenience to have to walk on two legs and wear clothes. There were so many things he didn't know. Yet had he been a fish or a sunflower, and not a human being, he might never have experienced this emotion."


"We must remember that regardless of our differences in rank we are all equal as human beings. You can always tell how caring and compassionate others are in their actions towards those "below" them. Of course you are going to treat your black belt professor kindly, but how do you treat the white belt taking their first class? In spite of the division in belt rank there must be no division as people."


"People are like that .... They need to make their own worst experiences universal. It gives them a kind of support.' And who can blame them? It is just infuriating to argue with someone like that; because of an experience that has denied them their humanity, they go around denying another kind of humanity in others, which is the truth of human variety -- it stands alongside our sameness."



"What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy."


"Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer."


"A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes - as it is already to a large extent - no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a 'free-range warren but a 'battery one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed."


"We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty."


"Let us not despise the woman who is neither mother nor daughter nor wife. Let us not limit our esteem to family life, narrow our tolerance to simple egotism. Given that heaven rejoices more at the repentance of one sinner than over a hundred good men who have never sinned, let us endeavor to make heaven rejoice. We may be rewarded with interest. Let us leave along the path the alms of our forgiveness for those whose earthly desires have marooned them, so that a divine hope may save them, and, as the wise old women say when they prescribe a remedy of their own invention, if it doesn't help, at least it can't hurt."


"A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind."


"Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation."


"To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity."


"As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free."


"The palliative care nurses welcome him: he's a spot of brightness, they claim he keeps the patients interested in life. "We don't think of the clients here as dying," one of them said to him on his first visit. "After all everyone's dying, just some of us more slowly."


"I wish the hearts of human beings pumped with kind desires.I wish every gaze landed on the eyes of others compassionately.I wish hatred, envy, and vengeance were alien concepts to humankind.I wish the precious worth of every soul was universally understood."


"Throughout the history of mankind, the virtues embraced by humanity have remained true, unwavering, and consistent."


"He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness."


"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."


"I find a certain comfort," confesses Marinus, "in humanity's helplessness."


"I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful."


"Being tough isn't in and of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it, though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried to understand those who were weak. I was too used to being fortunate, and didn't try to understand those less fortunate. Too used to being healthy, and didn't try to understand the pain of those who weren't. Whenever I saw a person in trouble, somebody paralyzed by events, I decided it was entirely his fault""he just wasn't trying hard enough. People who complained were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakable, and practical, but lacked any human warmth. And not a single person around me pointed this out.' - Miu."



"Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity."


"If you can HELP someone, DO IT! The world NEEDS more of THAT!"


"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."



"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not."


"Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty-it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy."


"When we make friends then we change from being animals to being human."


"The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence."



"There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others."
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