Quotes about humanity

page 27

“We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.”

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”

“Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.”

“For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another.”

“Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.”

“I let myself feel good and sorry for myself, but only for a second. Daddy always said that the most useless of all human emotions was self-pity.”

“A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

“The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it's been broken into a million pieces.”

“The more I see of the world, the more am i dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistencies of all human.”

“The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.”

“An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.”

“Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.”

“Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings… but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.”

“Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition… must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.”

“The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.”

“What would Jesus, or any human being who isn't an asshole, do?”

“Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.”

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”

“I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!”

“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.”

“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.”

“It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood ffor thousands of years, was saying back to her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot.”

“Our flaws are what makes us human. If we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don't even have to be an issue.”

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

“When did we stop being people, being human?”

“All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.”

“Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.”

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

“The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.”

“You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.”

“It's choice that makes us human.”

“They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”

“I believe there's a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.”

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

“Denial, they say, stands for"Don't even notice I am lying." Human beings are the only animals who are happily lied to by our own minds about what is actually happening around us.”

“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.”

“The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”

“… The human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty.”

“She's you, without your conscience, or your feelings. She's you without your humanity."
"You're saying she's a mood swing?"
He shrugged. "Or maybe you're her mood swing."
"Don't even joke about that.”

“I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.”

“And those who saw, it did surprise,
Such drops could fall from human eyes.”

“I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind — the landscape of the human soul.”

“Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.”

“Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”

“I really am only one infinitely small part of an aching humanity.”

“All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that's why you so often want to kill each other.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world.”

“there's nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can't be endured - if you have someone to share it with.”

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”

“Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.”

“Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

“The sad truth about humanity… is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.”

“The human mind had a remarkable ability both to discount what it sees and make reality conform to expectation.”

“It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.”

“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”

“Is that your reason for fighting?! We're different!!! We fight for the sake of our injured friends!!! No matter if our opponents are humans, demons, or even gods!!!”

“When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster.”

“Were-Hunters are different from humans. (Ravyn)
You mean other than the fact that you live for several hundred years, can turn into animals, time travel, and wave your hand to make freaky stuff happen? (Susan)”

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”

“Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”

“That human, he's a lesser waiting to happen, in my opinion--nothing less, nothing more”

“Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their mind.”

“Will spread his arms wide. On his knees, grinning like a demon, blood dripping from his mouth, he barely looked human himself. “Come and get me.”

“Nature pulls one way and human nature another.”

“All human suffering concerns each human being”

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been different.”

“One serial killer sends me a human head in a box, and I get all spooked; Go figure.”

“She squinted up at him. "But I haven't always made good decisions."

Pastor Harris smiled. "All that shows is that you're human.”

“No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book, or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.”

“I loved everyone who said yes to the world and tried to make it better instead of worse, because so much in the world was ugly- and just about all the ugly parts were due to humans.”

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”

“But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.”

“Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.”

“You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.”

“Cupid, you worthless bastard, I summon you to human form! (Julian)
Gee, I can't imagine why he wouldn't respond to that. (Grace)”

“The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.”

“Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.”

“I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.”

“I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.”

“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

“If there is one sound the follows the march of humanity, it is the scream.”

“…the violin — that most human of all instruments…”

“Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.”

“Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldn't have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. They're kinder.”

“To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.”

“It is part of the human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds, or to blame someone else for our mistakes.”

“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
of human cities torture.”

“I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.”

“I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it sis my duty… This is my highest and best use as a human.”

“God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.”

“Feeling - what authentic human fun!”

“The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.”

“I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.”

“The human voice is the organ of the soul.”

“No human being is illegal.”

“The human soul needs beauty more than bread.”