Quotes about humanity
page 28

“The human soul needs beauty more than bread.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer (2000).

Life, Secret, World, Solitude

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Life, Truth, Beauty, Search

“Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Evil

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Love, Courage, Courageous

“When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.”

Glen Duncan (1965) British writer

Source: Talulla Rising

Literature, Heart

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God, Problem

“The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

God, Way, Effort, Sincerity

“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

World

“Normal: lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.”

Frank Portman King Dork

Source: King Dork

Understanding

“Advice for a human

86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Love, Hate, Disease, Art

“How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to his son, John Quincy Adams (13 November 1816)
1810s
Source: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“You’re like part human, part rainbow.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

The Circle

Parting

“Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

“Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Pleasure

“The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,… The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Light, Madness

“Some people are just born human, the rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

People

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Daybreakers

Men, Evil

“My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Passion, Parting, Indifference

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 10, p. 110
Source: What Is the What

Pain, Youth, Shoe, Boy

“All human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Also: Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,— "Wait and hope". Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 Variant: All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

Wisdom, Hope, Waiting, Wise

“When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn’t even bother trying. Savage Mac wants to invite it to come out and play. I think she’s nuts. Nuts, I tell you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Thinking

“The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”

Bruce D. Perry (1955) American psychiatrist

Source: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

Love, Change

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pain, Fear, Hope, Feeling

“When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

People, Nature

“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

God, Justice, Parting

“Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a single conception of ability. At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

TED Conference http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Intelligence, Communication, Sense, Heart

“A man of humanity is one who, in seeking to establish himself, finds a foothold for others and who, in desiring attaining himself, helps others to attain.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Help

“Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Limitations of Toleration" (8 May 1888), in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol VII
Source: The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

“Love and war always go together. They are the peaks of human emotion! Evil and good, beauty and ugliness”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Love, War, Beauty, Evil

“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From a letter to Hermann Huth, Vice-President of the German Vegetarian Federation, 27 December 1930. Supposedly published in German magazine Vegetarische Warte, which existed from 1882 to 1935. Einstein Archive 46-756. Quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2011), [//books.google.it/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&pg=PA453 p. 453].
1930s
Context: Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

“Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Heart

“There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.”

Nadeem Aslam book Maps for Lost Lovers

Source: Maps for Lost Lovers

Life, World, Time, Personality

“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

“She wants you to be a god," I told him.
"I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

God, Parent, Heart

“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”

Michel Houellebecq book Atomised

Source: The Elementary Particles

World

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique

Love, Nature

“Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.”

-I did nothing for you.”

-You loved me and your love made me--human.”

Isaac Asimov book Forward the Foundation

Source: Forward the Foundation

Love

“The story of one person is the story of all of humanity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Personality

“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, there are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, History, Question

“A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

“We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves.”

Ben Okri The Famished Road

Source: The Famished Road

God, World, Dreams

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Question, Suffering

“Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

Source: Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People

Love, Pain

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Law, Freedom, Time, Fight

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Source: The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“What is that smell? (Nick)
(It was like three-day-old cat vomit mixed with rotten asparagus.)
Duck urine. It keeps the zombies from thinking I’m human. (Mark)
Yeah, well it keeps me from thinking you’re sane. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Cats, Thinking

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

“You said in your book that at the end of the day, every politician is human. What about during the day?”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Books

“To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

“If humans were to model the lifestyle displayed by healthy community of cells, our societies and our planet would be more peaceful and vital”

Bruce H. Lipton (1944) US biologist

Peace, Communication

“The human heart is greedy; it will use religion, color, or any other excuse to justify its greed. Blame the human heart.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Religion, Color, Heart

“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

International Herald Tribune (21 February 1990)

World, Heart

“What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Life, Forgetting

“How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Source: Paradise

Happiness, Imagination

“Any time there's something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would try it, they send for me.' --Garion”

David Eddings book King of the Murgos

Source: King of the Murgos

Time

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Life, Women, Men, Understanding

“This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But i have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.
Source: East of Eden

Love, God, Soul, Universe

“Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?”

James Agee book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Source: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
Source: Nature's God

Sense

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,” said Grumman. “We have to learn everything we do.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

Nature, Learning

“Oh God, I just kissed a vampire!"

Oh Gods, I just kissed a human!”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Variant: Amanda - "Oh God, I just kissed a vampire!" Kyrian - "Oh Gods, I just kissed a human!
Source: Night Pleasures

God, Kiss

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

Ted Chiang (1967) American science fiction writer

Question, Nature, Thinking, Reality

“Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one two things: either love, or a call for love.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, Way, Behavior

“As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something Fresh

Source: Something Fresh

Life, Happiness, People, Pleasure

“When it came to the dark fuckery of the human heart, there seemed to be no limit.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

Heart

“Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Love, God, Cars, Dance

“All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

God, People, World, History

“There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.”

Dean Koontz book Intensity

Source: Intensity

Evil

“Look on the bright side," said Simon. "If they need a human sacrifice, you can always offer me. I'm not sure the rest of you qualify anyway."
Jace brightened. "It's always nice when someone volunteers to be the first up against the wall.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Life, Light, Universe

“The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Way, Mountain, Nature, Fight

“I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), p. 31.
Context: "Maybe," he said, "you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite."
"Not I!" said Jamal. "I am a believer of free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so."

Hate, Dogs

“What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Source: Microserfs

Behavior, Animals

“It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Love, Life, Sadness, Animals

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Nature

“there were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Love, People, World

“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.”

Neal Stephenson book Quicksilver

Source: Quicksilver

Question

“Without lies, humanity would perish of despair and boredom”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Despair

“Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

"Sisterhood" in New York Magazine (20 December 1971), p. 49

Nature

“There is no normal. I've never met a normal person. The concept is flawed. It implies that there is only one way people are supposed to be, and that can't possible be true. Human experience is far too varied.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Madness Underneath

People, Way, Personality

“I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine. Une Saison en Enfer http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Season.html (A Season in Hell) (1873) Source: Une saison en enfer; Illuminations; et autres textes

Hope, Soul

“She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Life

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Children, Way, Understanding, Passion

“Hmmm, I bet you’d be really cute with hornays. Not that you’re not cute right now, but you’re a bit young. You’re only what? Four in human years? Oh wait, that’s wrong, isn’t it? You ninety? (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Waiting

“I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.”

Siri Hustvedt book The Summer Without Men

Source: The Summer Without Men

Star, Sea

“If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Misattributed Source: Robert McAfee Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McAfee_Brown. Preface for the 25th anniversary edition of Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29. Page v, Bantam Books paperback; 1982 reissue edition.

Pain, People, Suffering, Loss

“For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Life, Death, Women, Men

“Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.”

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) Novelist, journalist

"Life, Art and America", in The Seven Arts (February 1917)

Art, Soul

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Learning, Reading

“I do not believe that the desires of young boys cause catastrophic events. The actions of humans do.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Boy

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny." Actually said by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his Miracle of Forgiveness (1969), p. 114. This predates any of the misquotations.
Other forms: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." This is also misattributed to Albert Schweitzer.
James did say: "As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness."
Misattributed
Context: Man alone, of all the creatures on earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives … It is too bad that most people will not accept this tremendous discovery and begin living it.

Change, Attitude

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

“The human tongue is a beast that few can master.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Quotes about humanity page 28

Quotes about humanity
page 28