Quotes about humanity
page 18

“Human nature as we know it is, nevertheless, malleable and manageable. It may be radically modified as a result of advances in bio-, molecular, nano- and computational technologies. It will therefore be essential to establish a clear code of ethics regulating the use of these technologies sooner rather than later.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.17

Nature

“Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.”

Stewart Brand book Whole Earth Discipline

Whole Earth Discipline (2009), page 216.

World, Fashion, Nature, Science

“The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

The New York Times (26 November 1978)

“You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

People, Family, Thinking

“Yes, in our world, old thinking can be a stubborn thing. That's one of the reasons why we need term limits -- old people think old ways. […] The old ways can be stubborn. But I believe the human heart is stronger. I believe hearts can change. I believe minds can open. That’s how change happens. That’s how societies move forward. It's not always a straight line -- step by halting step -- sometimes you go forward, you move back a little bit. But I believe we are marching, we are pointing towards ideals of justice and equality.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

People, World, Justice, Way

“The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

Statement as witness (3 May 1976)

Birth, Country

“There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought — a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.”

Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Life, God, Dreams, Hell

“And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

Death, Men

“As civilization develops, we become more preoccupied with human life, and less conscious of our relation to non-human nature. Literature reflects this, and the more advanced the civilization, the more literature seems to concern itself with purely human problems and conflicts. The gods and heroes of the old myths fade away and give place to people like ourselves.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School

Life, God, People, Literature

“As woman was the first to be tempted, so did God's message of grace come first to a woman, and each time woman's assent determined the destiny of humanity as a whole.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

God, Time

“And let the fear and dread of you be upon all of the animals of the earth.” Clearly, fear and dread were prescribed for the animals, but evidently it was forbidden among humans. By nature a human is superior to a brute animal, but not other humans.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Source: The Book of Pastoral Rule, p.62

Fear, Nature, Animals

“It is difficult to make a general judgement about genetic modification (GM), whether vegetable or animal, medical or agricultural, since these vary greatly among themselves and call for specific considerations. The risks involved are not always due to the techniques used, but rather to their improper or excessive application. Genetic mutations, in fact, have often been, and continue to be, caused by nature itself. Nor are mutations caused by human intervention a modern phenomenon. The domestication of animals, the crossbreeding of species and other older and universally accepted practices can be mentioned as examples. We need but recall that scientific developments in GM cereals began with the observation of natural bacteria which spontaneously modified plant genomes. In nature, however, this process is slow and cannot be compared to the fast pace induced by contemporary technological advances, even when the latter build upon several centuries of scientific progress.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

§ 133
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

Nature, Universe, Animals

“Young people in the audience today, young people like Laura, were born in a place and a time where there is less conflict, more prosperity and more freedom than any time in human history. But that’s not because man’s darkest impulses have vanished. Even here, in Europe, we’ve seen ethnic cleansing in the Balkans that shocked the conscience. The difficulties of integration and globalization, recently amplified by the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, strained the European project and stirred the rise of a politics that too often targets immigrants or gays or those who seem somehow different. While technology has opened up vast opportunities for trade and innovation and cultural understanding, it’s also allowed terrorists to kill on a horrifying scale. Around the world, sectarian warfare and ethnic conflicts continue to claim thousands of lives. And once again, we are confronted with the belief among some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way -- that recycled maxim that might somehow makes right. So I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation. And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today. Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident -- that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

People, Truth, World, Law

“Obama: Now, I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books, but that doesn't mean I don't know very well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause. I share your concerns and I understand them. And I promise you, we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible way. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. [Applause] And believe me, right now dealing with Congress —
Audience: Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!
Obama: Believe me — believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. [Laughter] I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. [Laughter] But that's not how — that's not how our system works.
Audience member: Change it!
Obama: That’s not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written. So let’s be honest. I need a dance partner here — and the floor is empty.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks to the National Council of La Raza (25 July 2011) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/25/remarks-president-national-council-la-raza 2011

Pain, People, Books, Law

“I believe in property rights, but I believe in them as adjuncts to, and not as substitutes for human rights. I believe that normally the rights of property coincide with the rights of man; but where they do not, then the rights of man must be; put above the rights of property. I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property; but wherever the alternative must be faced, I am for man and not for property. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character. I know well that if there is not sufficient prosperity the people will in the end rebel against any system, no matter how exalted morally; and reformers must not bring upon the people permanent economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

People

“The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation.
Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying "Look at me." "Look at me" is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Men, Children, World, Motivation

“The human heart desires joy. We all desire joy, every family, every people aspires to happiness. But what is the joy that the Christian is called to live out and bear witness to? It is the joy that comes from the closeness of God, from his presence in our life. From the moment Jesus entered into history, with his birth in Bethlehem, humanity received the seed of the Kingdom of God, like the soil receives the seed, the promise of a future harvest.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"Angelus", in Saint Peter's Square (14 December 2014) http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2014/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20141214.html 2010s, 2014

Life, God, Happiness, People

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths, — all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act II, sc. iv
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)

Faith, Religion, Beauty, Mountain

“The most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
(Buch I) (1867)

Passion

“But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000), p. 215

Love, Forgetting

“I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 14
The Education of the Stoic

God, Faith, Religion

“Activities that improve human capabilities [can be divided into] five major categories: (1) health facilities and services, broadly conceived to include all expenditures that affect the life expectancy, strength and stamina, and the vigor and vitality of a people; (2) On-the job training, including old-style apprenticeship organized by firms; (3) formally organized education at elementary, secondary and higher levels; (4) study programs for adults that are not organized by firms, including extension programs in agriculture; (5) Migration of individuals and families to adjust to changing job opportunities.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Source: "Investment in human capital," 1961, p. 9

Life, People, Health, Education

“[The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection … If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Truth, Imagination, Idea, Perfection

“Well then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him. I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than a man. I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts. Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

In a statement about Jesus Christ. While exiled on the rock of St. Helena, Napoleon called Count Montholon to his side and asked him, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" Upon the Count declining to respond Napoleon countered. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods http://books.google.com/books?id=jSI9HnMHdPsC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=napoleon+jesus+among+gods&source=bl&ots=CdsDSjamnm&sig=K3l7Ek972r7pyEFT681lbf3PVSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nBqhUf3RL4au9AS37ICwCQ&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA, p. 149, in Henry Parry Liddon (1868) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. New edition. https://books.google.com/books?id=IcINAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA148&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 147-148, and in Henry Parry Liddon (1869) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. Fourth edition. https://ia800203.us.archive.org/15/items/divinityofourlord00libbrich/divinityofourlord00libbrich.pdf pp. 147-148. Attributed

Love, Men, Children, Soul

“The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one's mood…. coming in from a dark bedroom in the morning into the sitting room one will, for example, see everything in a bluish light. Even the deepest shadows are topped with bright light. After a while one will accustom oneself to the light and the shadows will be deeper and everything will be seen more sharply. If an atmosphere of this kind is being painted it won't do merely to sit and gaze at everything 'just as one sees'. One must paint precisely the fleeting moment of significance – one must capture the exact experience separating that significant moment from the next – the exact moment when the motif struck one… In some circumstances a chair may seem to be just as interesting as a human being. In some way or another it must have caught the interest in which case the onlooker's interest must somehow be engaged in the same way. It's not the chair that should be painted, but what the person has felt at the sight of it [written in Saint Cloud, 1890 - probably related to the chair of Vincent van Gogh”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

Quote of Munch from: T 2770, (1890); as cited in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 83-84
1880 - 1895

Way, Mood, Light, Painting

“At this point, an urgent question arises:… Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 41.

Law, Question, Nature, Time

“This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Sickness unto Death (July 30, 1849), pp. 114 - 115

God, Faith

“We toured Cape Coast Castle, a place for centuries where men, women, and children of this nation and surrounding areas were sold into slavery. I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African Americans, walking through those doors of no return, but then walking back those doors of return. It was a remarkable reminder that while the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Barack Obama: "Remarks Prior to Departure from Accra, Ghana," July 11, 2009. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=86393&st=&st1= 2009

Women, Men, Children, Future

“We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Life, Men, Freedom

“The fullness of grace can transform the human heart and enable it to do something so great as to change the course of human history.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Inauguration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy

History, Change, Heart

“In this way, the mansions arranged along either bank of the canal made one think of objects of nature, but of a nature which seemed to have created its works with a human imagination.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Aussi, les demeures disposées des deux côtés du chenal faisaient penser à des sites de la nature, mais d'une nature qui aurait créé ses œvres avec une imagination humaine.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. III: Venise

Way, Imagination, Nature, Thinking

“All soil is human birthright.”
Omne homini natale solum.

Statius book Thebaid

Variant translation: The whole world is a man's birthplace.
Source: Thebaid, Book VIII, Line 320 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

“The advent of the Computer age has stimulated a rapid expansion in the use of quantitative techniques for the analysis of economic, urban, social, biological and other types of systems in which it is the animate rather than in dominant role. At present, most of the techniques employed for the analysis of humanistic, i. e., human centred systems are adaptations of the methods that have been developed over a long period of time for dealing with mechanistic systems, i. e., physical systems governed in the main by-the laws of mechanics, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics. The remarkable successes of these methods in unraveling the secrets of nature and enabling us to build better and better machines have inspired a widely held belief that the same or similar techniques can be applied with comparable effectiveness to the analysis of humanistic systems.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Source: 1970s, Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes (1973), p. 28

Secret, Age, Law, Nature

“What’s at stake in this debate goes far beyond a few months of headlines, or passing tensions in our foreign policy. When you cut through the noise, what’s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are in a world that is remaking itself at dizzying speed. Whether it’s the ability of individuals to communicate ideas; to access information that would have once filled every great library in every country in the world; or to forge bonds with people on other sides of the globe, technology is remaking what is possible for individuals, and for institutions, and for the international order. So while the reforms that I have announced will point us in a new direction, I am mindful that more work will be needed in the future. One thing I’m certain of: This debate will make us stronger. And I also know that in this time of change, the United States of America will have to lead. It may seem sometimes that America is being held to a different standard. And I'll admit the readiness of some to assume the worst motives by our government can be frustrating. No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs, or Russia to take privacy concerns of citizens in other places into account. But let’s remember: We are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront of defending personal privacy and human dignity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

People, World, Communication, Motivation

“There is a Marian “style” to the Church’s work of evangelization. Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness. In her we see that humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves. Contemplating Mary, we realize that she who praised God for “bringing down the mighty from their thrones” and “sending the rich away empty” (Lk 1:52-53) is also the one who brings a homely warmth to our pursuit of justice. She is also the one who carefully keeps “all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). Mary is able to recognize the traces of God’s Spirit in events great and small. She constantly contemplates the mystery of God in our world, in human history and in our daily lives. She is the woman of prayer and work in Nazareth, and she is also Our Lady of Help, who sets out from her town “with haste” (Lk 1:39) to be of service to others. This interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others, is what makes the ecclesial community look to Mary as a model of evangelization.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 288
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, God, World, Justice

“In the course of thousands of years of mechanical development, the mechanistic concept, from generation to generation, has anchored itself deeply in man's biological system. In so doing, it actually has altered human functioning in the sense of the machine-like. In the process of killing his genital function, man has become biologically rigid. He has armored himself against that which is natural and spontaneous within him, he has lost contact with the biological function of self-regulation and is filled with a strong fear of that which is alive and free.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Section 2 : The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

Fear, Nature, Sense, Strong

“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Human Options (1981)

Loneliness, Missing You

“I’ve said this before -- when human rights are denied and citizens have no opportunity to redress their grievances peacefully, it feeds terrorist propaganda that justifies violence. Likewise, when political opponents are treated like terrorists and thrown in jail, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the real path to lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; I believe it is more democracy in terms of free speech, and freedom of religion, rule of law, strong civil societies. All that has to play a part in countering violent extremism.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism speech (September 2015)

Religion, Law, Democracy, Freedom

“The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out-and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 418

Cars, Imagination, Light

“As regards to its use on the coinage we have actual experience by which to go. In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of having appealed to any high emotion in him. But I have literally hundreds of times heard it used as an occasion of, and incitement to, the sneering ridicule which it is above all things undesirable that so beautiful and exalted a phrase should excite.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, "In God we Trust" letter (1907)

Life, Beauty, Time

“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Men, Strong, Time

“One-sixth, and a little more, of the population of the United States are slaves, looked upon as property, as nothing but property. The cash value of these slaves, at a moderate estimate, is $2,000,000,000. This amount of property value has a vast influence on the minds of its owners, very naturally. The same amount of property would have an equal influence upon us if owned in the north. Human nature is the same, people at the south are the same as those at the north, barring the difference in circumstances. Public opinion is founded, to a great extent, on a property basis. What lessons the value of property is opposed, what enhances its value is favored. Public opinion at the south regards slaves as property and insists upon treating them like other property.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

People, Nature

“One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. The condemned murderer who is allowed to see the account of his trial in the press is indignant if he finds a newspaper which has reported it inadequately. And the more he finds about himself in other newspapers, the more indignant he will be with the one whose reports are meagre. Politicians and literary men are in the same case… It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of vanity throughout the range of human life, from the child of three to the potentate at whose frown the world trembles. Mankind have even committed the impiety of attributing similar desires to the Deity, whom they imagine avid for continual praise.
But great as is the influence of the motives we have been considering, there is one which outweighs them all. I mean the love of power. Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power. The people who enjoy the greatest glory in the United States are film stars, but they can be put in their place by the Committee for Un-American Activities, which enjoys no glory whatever.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love, Life, Men, People

“With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior…. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 8
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Food, Art, Behavior, Question

“We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings […]. Cadres decide everything!”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2495035?uid=3738776&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104844992271 A more accurate translation, with respect to the context, might read: "Cadres are the key to everything" In Russian: [...] из всех ценных капиталов, имеющихся в мире, самым ценным и самым решающим капиталом являются люди [...]. Кадры решают все! Address to the Graduates from the Red Army Academies http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/GRA35.html. (4 May 1935); Variant translation: Human resources solve all! Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

World, Understanding, Decision

“Dr. Martin, I am a man marked by death. We shall not be able to go on seeing each other for long and in your own interests I suggest you do not come here any more. Whatever happens, mark what I say: From now on Germany is in the hands of an Austrian who is a congenital liar, a former officer who is a pervert, and a clubfoot. And I tell you the last is the worst of them all. This is Satan in human form.”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

To Dr. Martin (9 December 1932). Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years", p. 190 by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994

Death

“It is the ones who believe in God, who preach peace and talk of love, who have created the human jungle. Compared to man's jungle, nature's jungle is simple and sensible! In nature animals don't kill their own kind. That is part of the beauty of nature. In this regard man is worse than the other animals. The so-called "civilized" man kills for ideals and beliefs, while the animals kill only for survival.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything

Love, God, Peace, Beauty

“Before being humans, we are animals.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Source: Artificial Societies of Intelligent Agents (2001), p. 26 (also on p. 4)

Animals

“In the great philosophy of Brahma, such violent turns of the scale are quite unknown. It embraces vast stretches of time, cycles of human ages, whose successive lives gravitate in concentric circles, and travel ever slowly towards the center….”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Life of Ramakrishna (1929)

Age, Travel, Time, Success

“The lust for power, which of all human vices was found in its most concentrated form in the Roman people as a whole, first established its victory in a few powerful individuals, and then crushed the rest of an exhausted country beneath the yoke of slavery.

For when can that lust for power in arrogant hearts come to rest until, after passing from one office to another, it arrives at sovereignty? Now there would be no occasion for this continuous progress if ambition were not all-powerful; and the essential context for ambition is a people corrupted by greed and sensuality.”
Ipsa libido dominandi, quae inter alia uitia generis humani meracior inerat uniuerso populo Romano, postea quam in paucis potentioribus uicit, obtritos fatigatosque ceteros etiam iugo seruitutis oppressit.Nam quando illa quiesceret in superbissimis mentibus, donec continuatis honoribus ad potestatem regiam perueniret? Honorum porro continuandorum facultas non esset, nisi ambitio praeualeret. Minime autem praeualeret ambitio, nisi in populo auaritia luxuriaque corrupto.

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

as translated by H. Bettenson (1972), Book 1, Chapter 31, p. 42
The City of God (early 400s)

People, Victory, Heart, Country

“Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care (I suppose) how many seeds of war are sown; but for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Marquis de Chastellux (25 April 1788), published in The Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 29, p. 485
1780s

Men, War, Learning, Rage

“He knew, better than the cynic, that if you look out over the arc of history, human beings should be filled not with fear but with hope.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at Memorial Service for Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/30/remarks-president-obama-memorial-service-former-israeli-president-shimon (30 September 2016) 2016

Fear, Hope, History

“Godliness consists in the knowledge love & worship of God, Humanity in love, righteousness & good offices towards man.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Of Godliness.
A short Schem of the true Religion

Love, God, Knowledge

“And even as we meet conventional threats, we need to face other challenges. And that includes propaganda campaigns that try to whip up fears and divide people from one another. We reject the idea that people cannot live and thrive together, just because they have different backgrounds or speak a different language. And the best antidotes to such distorted thinking are the values that define us. Not just in the Baltics, but throughout Europe, we must acknowledge the inherent dignity and human rights of every person -- because our democracies cannot truly succeed until we root out bias and prejudice, both from our institutions and from our hearts. We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech -- because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth. We have to embrace open and inclusive societies -- because our countries are more successful and more prosperous when we welcome the talents of all our people, including minorities. That’s part of the work that we must do. That's the example we must set.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Truth, Fear, Democracy

“One must learn to forgive and not to hold a hostile, bitter attitude of mind, which offends those about us and prevents us from enjoying ourselves; one must recognize human shortcomings and adjust himself to them rather than to be constantly finding fault with them.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Hostility, Forgiveness, Learning

“As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 9
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Truth, Art, Imagination, Fashion

“In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!”

Jules Verne book From the Earth to the Moon

À en croire certains esprits bornés, — c'est le qualificatif qui leur convient, — l'humanité serait renfermée dans un cercle de Popilius qu'elle ne saurait franchir, et condamnée à végéter sur ce globe sans jamais pouvoir s'élancer dans les espaces planétaires! Il n'en est rien! On va aller à la Lune, on ira aux planètes, on ira aux étoiles, comme on va aujourd'hui de Liverpool à New York, facilement, rapidement, sûrement, et l'océan atmosphérique sera bientôt traversé comme les océans de la Lune!
Tr. Walter James Miller (1978)
Variant: If we are to believe certain narrow minded people — and what else can we call them? — humanity is confined within a circle of Popilius from which there is no escape, condemned to vegetate upon this globe, never able to venture into interplanetary space! That's not so! We are going to the moon, we shall go to the planets, we shall travel to the stars just as today we go from Liverpool to New York, easily, rapidly, surely, and the oceans of space will be crossed like the seas of the moon.
Source: From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Ch. XIX: A Monster Meeting (Charles Scribner's Sons "Uniform Edition", 1890, p. 93)

People, Travel, Star

“For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.”

Larry Niven book Flash Crowd

Flash Crowd, section 9, in Three Trips in Time and Space (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg, p. 74

Change

“Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie withing every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 7)

Truth, Lie, Hope, Learning

“Just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of Power

Life, Men, Children, Education

“When you reached the age of reason, I secured you from the influence of human prejudice; when your heart awoke I preserved you from the sway of passion. Had I been able to prolong this inner tranquillity till your life's end, my work would have been secure, and you would have been as happy as man can be; but, my dear Emile, in vain did I dip you in the waters of Styx, I could not make you everywhere invulnerable; a fresh enemy has appeared, whom you have not yet learnt to conquer, and from whom I cannot save you. That enemy is yourself. Nature and fortune had left you free. You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being; now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Life, Death, Pain, Happiness

“Human behavior is predictable, but, as in physical science, accurate prediction hinges on the correctness of underlying theoretical assumptions. There is, in fact, no prediction without theory; all managerial decisions and actions rest on assumptions about behavior. If we adopt the posture of the ostrich with respect to our assumptions under the mistaken idea that we are thus “being ‘practical,” or that “management is an art,” our progress with respect to the human side of enterprise will indeed be slow. Only as we examine and test our theoretical assumptions can we hope to make them more adequate, to remove inconsistencies, and thus to improve our ability to predict.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 11 (2006; 13)

Hope, Art, Behavior, Idea

“Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals — for all that is admirable in man is the artificial product of special breeding. We advocate the preservation of conditions favourable to the growth of beautiful things — imposing palaces, beautiful cities, elegant literature, resposeful art and music, and a physically select human type such as only luxury and a pure racial strain can produce. Thus we oppose democracy, if only because it would retard the development of a handsome Nordic breed. We realise that all conceptions of justice and ethics are mere prejudices and illusions — there is no earthly reason why the masses should not be kept down for the benefit of the strong, since every man is for himself in the last analysis.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Justice, Beauty, Art, Music

“Every animal is sad after coitus except the human female and the rooster.”
Triste est omne animale post coitum, praeter mulierem gallumque

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen (30-200 A.D.), in: Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, (1973), p. 19.
Latter day attributions

Sadness, Animals

“There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts…the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Psychology and Poetry (June 1930)

Life

“Proudly, the United States has supported democracy and human rights in Cuba through these five decades. We have done so primarily through policies that aimed to isolate the island, preventing the most basic travel and commerce that Americans can enjoy anyplace else. And though this policy has been rooted in the best of intentions, no other nation joins us in imposing these sanctions, and it has had little effect beyond providing the Cuban government with a rationale for restrictions on its people. Today, Cuba is still governed by the Castros and the Communist Party that came to power half a century ago. Neither the American, nor Cuban people are well served by a rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born. Consider that for more than 35 years, we’ve had relations with China –- a far larger country also governed by a Communist Party. Nearly two decades ago, we reestablished relations with Vietnam, where we fought a war that claimed more Americans than any Cold War confrontation.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

War, People, Travel, Democracy

“But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)
Context: I believe that every person should be equal under the law. Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world.

People, World, Universe

“Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Life, Time, Personality

“Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Drawing

“The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done — turn back and get at something profitable — no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 22 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-22.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Cats, Learning, Time, Horse

“Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

War, Feeling

“Reorganisation, irrespectively of God or king, by the worship of Humanity, systematically adopted. Man’s only right is to do his duty. The Intellect should always be the servant of the Heart, and should never be its slave.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Title Page
A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856)

God, Heart

“I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in The Films of Paul Newman (1971) by Lawrence J. Quirk (Citadel Press), ISBN 0-806-50385-8), p. 36

Life, People, Guy, Communication

“Denying the existence of God the Creator is like an artificial intelligent machine doubting the existence of human inventors.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

God, Intelligence

“Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.”

Olof Palme (1927–1986) Swedish 20th century prime minister

Quoted in: V. Thomas (2009) The God Dilemma: To Believe Or Not to Believe,.

God, Feeling

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

As quoted in The 32d Infantry Division in World War II (1956) by Harold Whittle Blakeley, p. 3

Soul, Heart Touching, Powerful, For Him

“Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Telle est donc la condition humaine que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c’est souhaiter du mal à ses voisins.
"Fatherland" (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Country

“By happy fraternity amongst themselves, the embodied beings get the supreme peace. Then all this earth shines like one house. When the men, the embodied beings treat each other with equal respect and have good brotherly feelings amongst themselves, great peace and harmony abound. Then all this earth shines like one house. The whole world shines like the one dwelling house of the entire human family.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sri Ramana Gita

Men, Happiness, World, Family

“The motivation that drives the commission of the worst human atrocities is an inevitable social consequence of the refusal of the self-conscious individual to make the sacrifices appropriate to establishing a harmonious life, and their consequent degeneration into a kind of murderous and resentment-filled rage propagating endlessly through its variations in society until everything comes to an end.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Tragedy vs Evil (5th Biennial International Conference on Personal Meaning, July 24-27, 2008). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLp7vWB0TeY&t=32m21s Other

Life, Motivation, Rage

“This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Speech in Birmingham, England encouraging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament (15 April 1961)
1960s

Idea

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Gandhi's Collected Works, Vol 74 (1938)
1930s

Sense

“When I had felt compelled by increasing knowledge of nature to revise some of my traditional articles of religious faith, I was delighted to find that these changes had not modified in any essential respects my system of ethics. As I expressed it in my presidential address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1937:
"The ethics of science regards the search for truth as one of the highest duties of man; it regards noble human character as the finest product of evolution; it considers the service of all mankind as the universal good; it teaches that human nature and humane nurture may be improved, that reason may replace unreason, cooperation supplement competition, and the progress of the human race through future ages be promoted by intelligence and goodwill."”

Edwin Grant Conklin (1863–1952) American biologist and zoologist

Edwin Grant Conklin, in: p. 74 Thirteen Americans: their spiritual autobiographies https://archive.org/stream/religionandcivil000911mbp#page/n91/mode/2up Louis Finkelstein (ed.), 1953, p. 74

Truth, Age, Faith, Search

“Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve inevitable conflicts between states. And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle -- through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution -- that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding. And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men -- and women -- are created equal. But those ideals have also been tested -- here in Europe and around the world. Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power. This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign. Often, this alternative vision roots itself in the notion that by virtue of race or faith or ethnicity, some are inherently superior to others, and that individual identity must be defined by “us” versus “them,” or that national greatness must flow not by what a people stand for, but by what they are against. In many ways, the history of Europe in the 20th century represented the ongoing clash of these two sets of ideas, both within nations and among nations. The advance of industry and technology outpaced our ability to resolve our differences peacefully, and even among the most civilized of societies, on the surface we saw a descent into barbarism.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Women, Men, War, People

“We humans are, at bottom, carriers of the time, because we take it with us, we use it, sometimes we waste it and sometimes something remains, though everything is doomed to oblivion.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

"Efe" report, Folha de São Paulo http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/ilustrada/ult90u68178.shtml, 2007.

Time

“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

Sleep, Sun, Anger, Forgetting

“To me you can wrap all of Judaism up in one sentence, and that is, 'Do not do unto others…' All I tried to do in my stories was show that there's some innate goodness in the human condition. And there's always going to be evil; we should always be fighting evil.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry Part I: The Golden Age (1933-1955) Reform Judaism http://reformjudaismmag.net/03fall/comics.shtml (2003)

Evil, Fight

“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Se não formos capazes de viver inteiramente como pessoas, ao menos façamos tudo para não viver inteiramente como animais.
Source: Blindness (1995), p. 116

Animals

“When I write these notes, it is not to describe my own life. I am writing a study of the soul as I observe myself closely and use myself as an anatomical testing-ground. It would therefore be wrong to look on these notes as confessions. I have chosen – in accordance with Søren Kierkegaard – to split the work into two parts; the painter and his distraught friend the poet. Just as Leonarda da Vinci studied the recesses of the body and dissected human cadavers, I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is the universal in the soul”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written after 1908
in The Mad Poet's Diary, T 2734
1896 - 1930

Life, Soul, Study, Universe

“It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

Justice, Question, Problem

“Whatever we do must be in accord with human nature. We cannot drive people; we must direct their development… The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, p. 116. cited in: Daniel A. Wren (1994) The evolution of management thought. p. 137.
Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910

People, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“As human beings, we have the power to speak up for animals. They don’t speak our language, so I feel like it’s up to us to help them and give them a voice. Animals have feelings. They have souls. They have emotions. The way they’re killed for fur is very inhumane. … They’re electrocuted, beaten, drowned, skinned alive. Once you know that, how could you think wearing fur is cool? It’s not.”

Jhené Aiko (1988) American singer-songwriter and recording artist

Interview with PETA; as quoted in " Jhené Aiko Poses Nude for PETA Anti-Fur Campaign http://www.rap-up.com/2016/12/06/jhene-aiko-poses-nude-for-peta-anti-fur-campaign/", Rap-Up.com (6 December 2016).

Way, Feeling, Soul, Thinking

“These, then, are some of the basic principles of ecology—interdependence, recycling, partnership, flexibiility, diversity, and, as a consequence of all those, sustainability …the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy, on our ability to understand these principles of ecology and live accordingly.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Epilogue: Ecological Literacy
The Web of Life (1996)

Understanding, Dependency, Partnership

“In the stage of manhood alone does the human race first appear in his dignity; only there are his principles fixed, his connections appropriate, he sees the full circumference of his sphere; there alone — after we have already learned through many detours, through long, repeated, sad experiences, what a calamity it is to arrogate the rights of others, to raise oneself over others through mere external advantages, to use his size to the detriment of others — there alone one recognizes, believes, feels what an honor, what a joy it is to be a human being.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) p. 20.

Sadness, Feeling, Learning, Appearance

“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.”

Tennessee Williams The Rose Tattoo

The Timeless World of Play http://books.google.com/books?id=Rp3TJUCT9soC&q=%22Snatching+the+eternal+out+of+the+desperately+fleeting+is+the+great+magic+trick+of+human+existence%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage, an introductory essay to The Rose Tattoo (1951)

“Precisely the way on which the species reaches its perfection, every individual human being (one earlier, one later) must have traversed, too.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic

Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch (der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben.
The Education of Mankind, § 93

Way, Perfection

“The assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition. But… there could just as well be layers lying above consciousness… The conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backward with the physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditioned partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.”

C.G. Jung book Psychology and Alchemy

Source: Psychology and Alchemy (1952), p. 132

Lie, Lying, Time, Dependency

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Kilgore Trout's epitaph
Unsourced paraphrase or variant: We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane.
Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Idea

“A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: "I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother."”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Ch. VII, Social Problems in the Forest, p. 130 https://archive.org/stream/ontheedgeofthepr007259mbp#page/n163/mode/2up (1924 translation by Ch. Th. Campion); Schweitzer later repudiated such statements, saying "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed.", as quoted in [Forrow, Lachlan, Foreword, Russell, C.E.B., African Notebook, Syracuse University Press, Albert Schweitzer library, 2002, 978-0-8156-0743-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=qa-TVXEkY3sC&pg=PR13, 23 June 2017, xiii] Variant: The African is my brother — but he is my younger brother by several centuries. As quoted in The Observer (23 October 1955) On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1922)

Life, Children, Feeling, Nature

“Even though we come from different places, we share common dreams: to choose our leaders; to live together in peace; to get an education and make a good living; to love our families and our communities. That’s why freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possible -- not just at the ballot box, but in our daily lives.
One of our greatest Presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined America’s cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

Love, Truth, World, Education

“And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 125
Valéry alludes to a famous pensée of Blaise Pascal: 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces affrights me.' (Pensées, no. 201).
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Way, Silence

Quotes about humanity page 18

Quotes about humanity
page 18