“I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.”

version in original Dutch (citaat van Gerrit Benner, in het Nederlands:) Ik hou van Friesland, maar ik voel me geen Fries. Ik ben een mens, die Gerrit Benner heet, die schildert..
Gerrit Benner (1971), in an interview with K. Peerebooms: 'Jarenlang schilderen zonder een klankbord'; Dutch newspaper 'Het Parool', 3 Nov. 1971
1950 - 1980

Remark to Gen. Edward H. Ripley (5 April 1865), recalled during Ripley's speech http://books.google.com/books?id=1OoSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353&dq=believe at the 41st annual meeting of the Reunion Society of Vermont Officers (1 November 1904)
Posthumous attributions

This I Believe (1951)
Context: I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 87, when asked if he thought of himself as Chinese or American

Der Verstandesmensch verhöhnt nichts so bitter als den Edelmut, dessen er sich nicht fähig fühlt.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 20.

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

Lewman, Mark. Dirt Magazine. 1992.

Source: Ronnie (2008, posthumous), p. 196; Quoting from Sunday Times, June 2000