Quotes about humanity (10000 quotes, page 22)

“But to understand the great drama of the Russian Revolution and the inner forces that shaped and brought the great change about, a study of cold theory is of little use. The October Revolution was undoubtedly one of the great events of world history, the greatest since the first French Revolution, and its story is more absorbing, from the human and the dramatic point of view, than any We or phantasy.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (1949)

Study , History , Understanding , World

“As we were very much pressed for time we were unable to see as much of the jail as we wanted to. We had an impression that we had been shown the brighter side of jail life. Nonetheless, two facts stood out. One was that we had actually seen desirable and radical improvements over the old system prevailing even now in most countries and the second and even more important fact was the mentality of the prison officials, and presumably the higher officials of the government also, in regard to jails. Actual conditions may or may not be good but the general principles laid down for jails are certainly far in advance of anything we had known elsewhere in practice. Anyone with a knowledge of prisons in India and of the barbarous way in which handcuffs, fetters and other punishments are used will appreciate the difference. The governor of the prison in Moscow who took us round was all the time laying stress on the human side of jail life, and how it was their endeavour to keep this in the front and not to make the prisoner feel in any way dehumanised or outcasted. I wish we in India would remember this wholesome principle and practise it in our daily lives even outside jail…. It can be said without a shadow of doubt that to be in a Russian prison is far more preferable than to be a worker in an Indian factory, whose lot is 10 to 11 hours work a day and then to live in a crowded and dark and airless tenement, hardly fit for an animal. The mere fact that there are some prisons like the ones we saw is in itself something for the Soviet Government to be proud of.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (1949)

Time , Country , Animals , Knowledge

“However extraordinary the results shown may appear, they are but trifling compared with those which are attainable by apparatus designed on these same principles. I have produced electrical discharges the actual path of which, from end to end, was probably more than one hundred feet long; but it would not be difficult to reach lengths one hundred times as great. I have produced electrical movements occurring at the rate of approximately one hundred thousand horse-power, but rates of one, five, or ten million horse-power are easily practicable. In these experiments effects were developed incomparably greater than any ever produced by human agencies, and yet these results are but an embryo of what is to be.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Horse , Appearance , Time

“As regards the security of a country against foreign invasion, it is interesting to note that it depends only on the relative, and not the absolute, number of the individuals or magnitude of the forces, and that, if every country should reduce the war-force in the same ratio, the security would remain unaltered. An international agreement with the object of reducing to a minimum the war-force which, in view of the present still imperfect education of the masses, is absolutely indispensable, would, therefore, seem to be the first rational step to take toward diminishing the force retarding human movement.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Education , War , Dependency , Country

“For every person who perishes from the effects of a stimulant, at least a thousand die from the consequences of drinking impure water. This precious fluid, which daily infuses new life into us, is likewise the chief vehicle through which disease and death enter our bodies. The germs of destruction it conveys are enemies all the more terrible as they perform their fatal work unperceived. They seal our doom while we live and enjoy. The majority of people are so ignorant or careless in drinking water, and the consequences of this are so disastrous, that a philanthropist can scarcely use his efforts better than by endeavoring to enlighten those who are thus injuring themselves. By systematic purification and sterilization of the drinking water the human mass would be very considerably increased. It should be made a rigid rule which might be enforced by law to boil or to sterilize otherwise the drinking water in every household and public place. The mere filtering does not afford sufficient security against infection. All ice for internal uses should be artificially prepared from water thoroughly sterilized. The importance of eliminating germs of disease from the city water is generally recognized, but little is being done to improve the existing conditions, as no satisfactory method of sterilizing great quantities of water has yet been brought forward. By improved electrical appliances we are now enabled to produce ozone cheaply and in large amounts, and this ideal disinfectant seems to offer a happy solution of the important question.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Drink , Law , Question , Personality

“Understanding is not such that we either enjoy it or lack it altogether. To be human and to be aware is to encounter only what is in some manner understood. Thus, it may be said that understanding is an unsought condition; we inexorably inhabit a world of intelligibles.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

I. On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct
On Human Conduct (1975)

World , Intelligence , Understanding

“The question of human procreation, like every other question which touches human life, involves more than the limited aspects specific to such disciplines as biology, psychology, demography or sociology.”

Pope Paul VI Humanae Vitae

De propaganda prole quaestio, non secus atque quaelibet quaestio humanam vitam attingens, ultra particulares alias eiusdem generis rationes - cuiusmodi eae sunt, quae biologicae aut psychologicae, demographicae aut sociologicae appellantur
HUMANAE VITAE
Official Vatican translation.

Life , Question

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

God , Religion , History , Country

“Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli. The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli. Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy, are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil.”

Anwar Sadat (1918–1981) Egyptian president and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

[Address by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset, Anwar, Sadat, Visit to Israel by President Sadat, Jerusalem, November 20, 1977, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/address-by-egyptian-president-anwar-sadat-to-the-knesset, October 9, 2018]

War , Life , Children , Family

“He who can buy bravery is brace, though a coward. As money is not exchanged for anyone specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every property for every other, even contradictory, property and object: it is the fraternization of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader

Money , World , Making love , Nature

“Any liberal system must proceed from the assumption that freedom is one and indivisible and that elementary human freedom in all spheres of life must go hand in hand with political, religious, economic and spiritual freedom. The strategy of collectivist thinking has always been to split up this most essential and most universal of human values as a means of making inroads into the free system itself.”

Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) German politician

The Economics of Success (D. van Nostrand & Co., 1963), pp. 291–292

Freedom , Universe , Thinking , Life

“Socialism and rationalism are to this day the touchstones of humanity, the rocks which lie in the course of revolution and science. Groups of swimmers, driven by reflection or the waves of circumstance against these rocks, break up at once into two camps, which, under different disguises, remain the same throughout all history, and may be distinguished either in a great political party or in a group of a dozen young men. One represents logic; the other, history: one stands for dialectics; the other for evolution. Truth is the main object of the former, and feasibility of the latter.”

Alexander Herzen book My Past and Thoughts

ibid, Ch. 8, s. 12
My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

History , Truth , Lie , Science

“This is a painful bit of truth: Fascism, in the form of irresponsibility, is present in the masses of all countries, nations and races. Fascism is the result of thousands of years of warping of the human structure. It could have developed in any nation. It is not a specific German or Italian character trait. It works in every mortal.”

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

Truth , Pain , Country

“In this era, the old things are being swept away and the new things are still being born. But until this historical era reaches its culmination, all certainty will remain an exception. People sense that everything about their everyday lives is a little out of order, out of order to a terrifying degree. All of us must live within a certain historical era, but this era sinks away from us like a shadow, and we feel we have been abandoned. In order to confirm our own existence, we need to take hold of something real, of something most fundamental, and to that end we seek the help of an ancient memory, the memory of a humanity that has lived through every era, a memory clearer and closer to our hearts than anything we might see gazing far into the future. And this gives rise to a strange apprehension about the reality surrounding us. We begin to suspect that this is an absurd and antiquated world, dark and bright at the same time. Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies, producing a solemn but subtle agitation, an intense but as yet indefinable struggle.”

Eileen Chang (1920–1995) Chinese writer and screenwriter

2. "Writing of One's Own" (pp. 17–18)
Liuyan [《流言》] (1968)

Time , Future , People , Heart

“One who has a gentle and profound insight into what lasts in India, and what elements inherent in human nature threaten it…the best in traditions of the East and the West have gone into the making of his liberal humanist philosophy.”

Masti Venkatesha Iyengar (1891–1986) Indian writer

Anatha Murthy, in his book review, describes Masti, the Sahitya Akademi Awardee as here [Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Masti, http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Masti.html?id=e6VqgWouUmUC&redir_esc=y, 2004, Katha, 978-81-87649-50-2, Review]
About Masti

Making love , Nature

“In our age of profound change, the Church is called to offer its unique contribution, by making visible the signs of the presence and closeness of God. And the Jubilee is a favorable time for us all, for in contemplating the Divine Mercy, which surpasses every human limitation and shines on the darkness of sin, we can become more convincing and effective witnesses.”

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

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Mercy Is 'What Pleases God Most

God , Time , Age , Making love

“In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human being. Fuck being an asshole, what you pussies thought it was twenty years ago.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

from CD Now (September 1999) with Jason Gross

“What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a universal process of symbolization was surreptitiously at work in human civilization, giving world history a discernible direction.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Mark Lilla, "Mr. Casaubon in America", The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2007)

World , Wedding , History , Universe

“The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Russell Kirk, " Ten Conservative Principles http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/ten-conservative-principles/" (1993)

People , Nature , Universe , Women

“I am impressed by what I read, by the depth of his ideas, of his message. He speaks about peace from a very original and unique perspective. We are used to hearing speeches about peace. We usually tend to leave peace in the hands of governments or political organizations. Prem Rawat speaks about peace from a different perspective—more precise, more human—and he stresses the significance of each human being in the pursuit of world peace. I find great merit in his message.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Dr. Díaz, Vice-Rector. Salamanca University. Salamanca, Spain. June 2003
About, 2000s

World , Idea , Peace , Reading

“Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Soul , Time , Beauty , Help

“God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and any other men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers and where every man will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality. This is what we work for and this is the good society which we must seek in America. But it will not come until enough people are willing to stand up and mobilize forces of good will, to seek to implement that which is just and right.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

God , Freedom , Personality , People

“The healing of the collective human consciousness is dependent upon us creating a society where we can make room for pain. You currently live in a world that has made only positive things, like positive emotions and success and being healed, acceptable. This is a world that sees anything less than this as a failure. This prevents people from healing. It prevents people from admitting to where they are and taking the sometimes counterintuitive steps they need to take in order to heal. It is ok to not be ok.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Pain , Dependency , Success , People

“You can get to a point where your consciousness as a physical human rises above the frequency of marijuana. When that is the case it will stop being something that relieves you and instead cause anxiety, because it's a drop in vibration instead of an increase in vibration.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Marijuana

“About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

God , Time , Dead , War

“Human beings free of debt, insecurity, and fear become much more amiable. With no one out to sell anyone anything or to deprive another of possessions or money, the basis for unhealthy human aggression is outgrown. People no longer are burdened by the nagging concerns that consume so much attention such as mortgages, health care costs, education fees, fire insurance, economic recession or depression, the loss of jobs, and taxes. With the elimination of these burdens and the removal of the conditions that create feelings of envy, greed, and competition, people’s lives would be far more meaningful.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 76

Money , Loss , Fear , People

“When education and resources are available to all without a price tag, there will be no limit to human potential.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: Designing the Future (2007), p.81

Education

“Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

As quoted in LIFE magazine (22 April 1957), p. 152; also in Letters and Papers from Prison (1967), p. 47

Life , Time , Suffering , Making love

“The 2019 novel coronavirus is a punishment by nature to humans' unsanitary lifestyle. I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) lab.”

Shi Zhengli (1964) Chinese researcher

Shi Zhengli (2020) cited in " China denies lab link to coronavirus as questions over origin mount https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/5/china-denies-lab-link-to-coronavirus-as-questions-/" on The Washington Times, 5 February 2020.

Life , Nature

“The worker in a capitalist state — and that is his deepest misfortune — is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they're manifestations of the same thing...They spring from the same source. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.”

Mae Jemison (1956) American doctor and NASA astronaut

2002 TED talk by Mae Jemison https://www.ted.com/talks/mae_jemison_on_teaching_arts_and_sciences_together/transcript?language=en, TED talk "Teach arts and sciences together," February, 2002

Understanding , Spring , Art , Universe

“The stress which exists in the world today is a result of competition and fear, the fear of failure, disease, death, war, calamity, and economic disruption. The pressure that these fears put on humanity inevitably results in psychosomatic diseases. The cure lies in a re-establishing of equilibrium. When we establish equilibrium in our lives through a restructuring of our political, economic and social institutions, we will find that the health of humanity will improve dramatically. We will not have to spend enormous sums of money maintaining health. In fact, illness prevention will become the norm. Disease can generally be prevented more easily than it can be cured.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Money , War , Health , World

“Tis true, I profess myself a Votary to Love — I acknowledge that a Lady is in the Case — and further I confess, that this Lady is known to you. — Yes Madam, as well as she is to one, who is too sensible of her Charms to deny the Power, whose Influence he feels and must ever Submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I coud wish to obliterate, till I am bid to revive them. — but experience alas! sadly reminds me how Impossible this is. — and evinces an Opinion which I have long entertaind, that there is a Destiny, which has the Sovereign controul of our Actions — not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.
You have drawn me my dear Madam, or rather have I drawn myself, into an honest confession of a Simple Fact — misconstrue not my meaning — ’tis obvious — doubt it not, nor expose it, — the World has no business to know the object of my Love, declard in this manner to — you when I want to conceal it — One thing, above all things in this World I wish to know, and only one person of your Acquaintance can solve me that, or guess my meaning.”

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

but adieu to this, till happier times, if I ever shall see them.

Letter to https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-06-02-0013#GEWN-02-06-02-0013-fn-0002 Mrs. George William Fairfax (Sally Cary Fairfax) (12 September 1758)
1750s

Business , Personality , Beauty , Nature

“Young people are openly talking about democracy, representation and freedom. They want to see constitutions that are by the people for the people. Children are challenging the adult world as they respond to the energies of the New Age. They want to see friendship, humanity and goodwill manifesting throughout the world.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Living: Living within the Laws of Life (2006)

Democracy , Friendship , Freedom , Children

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people... Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Interviewed with Wired: Gary Wolf. Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html (February 1996)
1990s

Problem , People , Feeling , Understanding

“Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Life

“The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of “a new heaven and a new earth." We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Time , History , Understanding , Books

“We must start from the joy of life, from respect, from humanity, because the most important thing in life is having respect for other people. Especially for those who might think very differently from you.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: THE VALUE OF HUMAN DIGNITY: Brunello Cucinelli’s Vision for a Better World https://gearpatrol.com/2018/12/20/brunello-cucinelli-interview/ John Zientek, Gear Patrol, December 20, 2018

Thinking , Joy , Life , People

“Frankly, any man that doesn't cry scares me a little bit. I don't think I would like a man who was incapable of enough emotion to get tears in his eyes every now and then. That type of person scares me. That's not a human being.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

Interview with Barbra Walters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohNUIVHRWWo (March 1991)

Personality , Thinking , Cry , Tear

“Another of humanity’s early awakened teachers emerged in China. His name was Lao Tzu. He left a record of his teaching in the form of one of the most profound spiritual books ever written, the Tao Te Ching.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Books , Teachers

“Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself—that is my doctrine.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Robert Green Ingersoll: "...my religion is simply this: <i>First</i>. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself. <i>Second</i>..." in "The Limitations of Toleration" (The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, vol. 7, pp. 217-260, quotation on p. 258).
Misattributed

“The only things I’ve ever confronted are institutions, religion, politics, but never my fellow human beings, and yet my fellow human beings find the need to defend those very things that are restricting their freedoms. God, that sounds like a speech. Should I run for president?”

John Lydon (1956) English singer, songwriter, and musician

Interview with Los Angeles Times, 2015

God , Religion , Freedom

“Compared to what human life has mainly been like here on earth, our current societies are WEIRD.”

Michael Stevens (educator) (1986) Internet personality

"Our Narrow Slice", Vsauce (8 October 2013)

Life

“To err is human. Yet it is a sign of how far computer science has come that to err is also artificially intelligent”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Science , Intelligence

“Conspiracy theories abound in many tragedies and injustices, but the greatest conspiracy of all is how human beings treat one another and other living things on Earth.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

“God gives life to human beings who in turn give birth to artificial intelligence.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Intelligence , God , Life , Birth

“The question is not whether humans will become extinct, but rather when they will. If the anti-natalist arguments are correct, it would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later for, the sooner it happens, the more suffering and misfortune will be avoided.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

" Kids? Just say no: You don’t have to dislike children to see the harms done by having them. There is a moral case against procreation https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral", Aeon (2017)

Suffering , Question

“For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.”

William Blake The Divine Image

The Divine Image, st. 3
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Peace , Love , Making love , Heart

“This body made of flesh is subject to death. If it is not washed for a single day, it stinks. We cannot trust the human body.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

48
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Death

“The most precious possessions in life cannot be touched by human hands; foremost, is the fulfillment of inner peace.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1976

Peace , Life

“Longing for someone to touch, caress and meld into, is a strong human emotion of never-ending desire and want. When the desires do not exist in real life, we tend to live them through dreams and fantasies. We even resort to the extent of choosing a person we know and have feelings for to place a face on the illusion.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Strong , Personality , Dreams , Life

“Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 3

Spring , Nature

“Stalin was an example of creativity, humanism and an edifying example of peace and heroism! [...] Everything that he did, he did at the service of the people. Our father Stalin is dead, but when remembering his example, our affection towards him will make our arms grow strong for the building of a great tomorrow, to assure a future in memory of his magnificent example.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Speech at the Baquedano Theater, Santiago, Chile (1953) https://web.archive.org/web/20101222183523/https://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc1011/nsc1011.pdf

Peace , Dead , Strong , Future

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life....The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997) p. 25

Life , Pain , Parting , Self-confidence

“Humans often complain of suffering, but they also herald it.”

Aaron Guzikowski tv series Raised by Wolves

Raised by Wolves, Season 1, Episode 8. Character Mother.

Suffering

“Humans, despite being raised pacifist, often played war. What they derived from such games is beyond my understanding.”

Aaron Guzikowski tv series Raised by Wolves

Raised by Wolves, Season 1, Episode 8. Character Mother.

War , Game , Understanding

“Every human being on earth has two things in common. Death and a broken heart.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1977

Death , Heart

“No teaching foresaw the future with such precision as Buddhism. Parallel with reverence to the Buddha, Buddhism develops the veneration of Bodhisattvas—future Buddhas. According to the tradition, Gotama, before reaching the state of Buddha, had been a Bodhisattva for many centuries. The word, Bodhisattva, comprises two concepts: Bodhi—enlightenment or awakening, and Sattva—the essence. Who are these Boddhisattvas? The disciples of Buddhas, who voluntarily have renounced their personal liberation and, following the example of their Teacher, have entered upon a long, weary thorny path of help to humanity. Such Bodhisattvas appear on earth in the midst of the most varying conditions of life. Physically indistinguishable in any way from the rest of humanity, they differ completely in their psychology, constantly being the heralds of the principle of the common welfare.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Personality , Future , Help , Teachers

“Political Economy regards the proletarian … like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. … (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or — like Proudhon — see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: First Manuscript – Wages of Labour, p. 6.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Religion , Time , Law , Horse

“It seems that the disenchantment of fate (though underestimated) was a milestone on the path of human development, the day we doubted ways of fate could only be compared to a Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. The first thought approach of modernity is the contradiction of destiny, with its sense of divine power ruling from the outer planes all phenomena and events happening in real world.”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Source: We'll go asleep, poems and ballads, "An innocent twist of fate" pg. 46

World , Way , Sense , Fate

“Struggle for spiritual freedom is the dharma for humanity.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

The Hindu Way ( Page 55 )

Freedom

“The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“The first of these blessed charlatans to talk about God or religion will be condemned to being jeered at, scoffed at, covered with mud at all crossroads of the major French towns. If that scoundrel breaks that same law a second time, he will be locked away in an eternal prison. Let the most insulting blasphemies, the most atheistic writings be fully authorized, so that we may completely extirpate those horrifying toys of our childhoods from human hearts and memories. Let us hold a contest to find at last the text most capable of Enlightening Europeans about such a major subject; and let a substantial prize be established by the Nation as recompense for the man who, having said and proved everything about his theme, will leave his compatriots only a sickle to shatter all these phantoms and a straightforward heart to detest them.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Childhood , God , Time , Religion

“Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.”

Naguib Mahfouz book Palace of Desire

Source: Palace of Desire

Sadness , Life

“Efficient exploitation of “human resources” requires that the structures that refer the others’ actions to the exploiter’s ends must extend beneath the victim’s skin. The exploiter has to bring about the partial disintegration and re(mis)integration of the others’ matter, parts and properties so that as organized systems the exploited are oriented to some degree by habits, skills, schedules, values and tastes to the exploiter’s ends rather than, as they would otherwise be, to ends of their own. In particular, the manipulations which adapt the exploited to a niche in another’s economy must accomplish a great reduction of the victim’s intolerance of coercion.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60

Parting

“To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.”

David Whyte

What to Remember When Waking

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
Source: báseň What to Remember When Waking ze sbírky The House of Belonging

“Scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories.”

Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) Uruguayan writer

Source: Democracy Now!, 8 May 2013, Eduardo Galeano, Chronicler of Latin America’s “Open Veins,” on His New Book “Children of the Days” https://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/8/eduardo_galeano_chronicler_of_latin_americas,

Bird

“For Freud, the pursuit of happiness is a distraction from living. It would be better to aim for something different -- a type of life in which you do not need a fantasy of satisfaction in order to find being human an interesting and worthwhile experience… Human beings are more likely to find ways of living well if they do not spend their lives aiming to be happy.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Source: The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

“Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i.e., the emancipation of nations and men.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)

Country , Idea , Intelligence , People

“The global development of human society spawns so many gifted and talented individuals, whose creations will be a key factor in its further progress.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

“The idea of non-interference of the supernatural in human fate was a turning point in human self-awareness & spiritual freedom.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Idea , Fate , Freedom

“The human being, corrupted to the root, can neither desire nor perform anything but evil.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Making of Martin Luther, By Richard Rex, p66
Attributed

Evil

“Love for life is, first and foremost, a responsibility to enrich it with spirituality and humanism.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Love , Life

“Feelings and emotions are the eternal superiority of a reasonable human being over his creation – artificial intelligence.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Intelligence , Feeling

“Fear, selfishness, greed and a human weakness for seeking the "easy way" have led us to the abyss.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Now or Never
Focus Fourteen

Selfishness , Way , Fear

“Humanism gains genuine meaning only when people's freedom is dedicated to every single human life.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Freedom , Life , People

“A human being is a flower that originates miraculously amidst a cosmic desert, capable of becoming a blossoming universal tree if we recognize this meaning and sincerely desire to.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Tree , Universe , Flowers , Sincerity

“A life-creating ability is what gives meaning to human ideals and aspirations for their embodiment!”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life

“We're not just athletes or entertainment -- we're human, too, and we have real emotions. Sometimes they don't realize that we have things going on behind the scenes that affects us whenever we go out and compete.”

Simone Biles (1997) American gymnast

"What's Next for Simone Biles? Gymnast Answers Questions on Future After Tokyo Games" in NBC Chicago (3 August 2021) https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/sports/tokyo-summer-olympics/simone-biles-whats-next-gymnast-answers-questions-on-future-after-tokyo-games/2578051/