Quotes about humanity
page 31

“It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.”

Ina May Gaskin (1940) American midwife

Source: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Life, Feeling, Silence, Grass

“Mercy will get you killed, but sometimes it's all that makes us human.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

To the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

Life, Happiness

“And love is always complicated. But still humans most try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Heart

“The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.”

Caleb Carr (1955) Novelist, screenwriter, military historian

Way, Loss

“We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Evil

“Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat

God, Soul, Victory

“Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.”

Dean Koontz book Your Heart Belongs to Me

Source: Your Heart Belongs to Me

Love

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Soul, History, Evil, Change

“Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Peace, Communication, Heart

“Human beings are millions of things in one day.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

“You are human and mortal; we are the sum of our weak moments and our strong.”

Mercedes Lackey book The Black Gryphon

Source: The Black Gryphon

Strong

“Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing…”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

People, World, Animals

“It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Justice

“One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Dreams, Nature

“The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Pain, World, Light

“Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Variant: Human beings can’t see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra. That’s original sin.
Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 21 : Lord Asriel's Welcome

Death

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America

People

“The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Way

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703) http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1726#lf0128-09_head_098

Love, Truth, World, Parting

“Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.”

Gary Shteyngart (1972) american journalist and writer

Reading

“Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Soul, Suffering

“All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 5

War

“Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

“When something horrible happens, it's human nature to want to blame it on someone. We want someone to be held accountable, even though sometimes things just happen.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Nature

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

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

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I grow old … I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Girl, Sea

“Even when we lose an arm or a leg, there's not less of us but more. Human experience weighs more than human tissue.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

“Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.”

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

God, Tear

“Human sympathy has its limits.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: Inquiry in the realm of Basic Natural Law is outside the judicial domain of this or ANY OTHER KIND OF SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION ANYWHERE ON THIS GLOBE, IN ANY LAND, NATION, OR REGION.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.

Error, Freedom, Learning

“The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 23 (p. 300)
Context: “The human eye is a wonderful device,” I quoted from Poems and Other Prevarications absently. “With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”

Effort

“I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Hope, Future

“No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Heart

“… the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Love, Secret

“The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

“Such is human memory… you forget the truth and believe what makes you feel better.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Truth, Feeling, Memory, Forgetting

“In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Water, Evil

“Then why can’t I bully you into procreating? (Wulf)
See! I’m the only human in history to have Viking yenta of his very own. God, how I wish my father had been a fertile man. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

God, History

“The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Fools, Appearance

“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Learning

“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Wisdom, People, Business

“The novels that attract me most… are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Hate, Dependency

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

People, Forgiveness, Time

“There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there's loss. Everything involves loss; every relationship ends in one way or another.”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

Life, Death, Way, Loss

“How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is not a very wonderful thing.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

Nature, Parting

“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Variant: the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

Problem, Heart

“Don't attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you're lonely. Lonliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best thing you can do it know yourself… know what you want.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

“Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Way, Time, Personality

“There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Heart

“Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Stage Manager"
Source: Our Town (1938)

“No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Nature

“Of course in the present day […] the world of work begins to become — threatens to become — our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 64–65
Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

World

“Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Universe, Heart

“Misogyny… is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Life, Soul, Parting

“It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

“But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”

Jonathan Franzen book Freedom

Source: Freedom

Feeling

“Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.”

Kevin Kelly book What Technology Wants

Source: What Technology Wants

“Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman

Change

“We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever… and all the time it is carrying us about… It is the human nervous system itself.”

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

Source: Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati

God, Secret, Time

“I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Dogs, Thinking

“Wine is like the incarnation--it is both divine and human”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Wine

“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Happiness, Imagination

“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.”

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

Soul, Universe, Animals

“The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Beauty, Search, Knowledge, Wealth

“Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?”

Howard Koch (1901–1995) American screenwriter

Source: War Of The Worlds : The Invasion From Mars

Time

“Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Source: Point Counter Point

Life, Nature

“thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.”

William Blake book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 71
Context: The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.

Men

“And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Time

“I know
it’s stupid to not own a gun yet have

so many triggers, but in some other world
gigantic seashells hold humans

to their ears and listen to the echo
of machines.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Stupidity, World

“How had it happened, Simon thought, that he was bound to these people—to people who thought of him as nothing more than a Downworlder, half human at best?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

People

“Human females, they're kind of crazy during this time aren't they?

If you chose to believe the stories written by male writers.

They heard a bang and thump from the kitchen. Followed by Meg yelling at something.

That many males can't be wrong.”

Anne Bishop book Murder of Crows

Source: Murder of Crows

Time

“The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

Nature, Passion, Indifference

“We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

War, Faith

“If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

World

“It was, of course, another test. Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Life

“The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing and so she won't commit to anything.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Girl

“Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.”

Margaret Atwood book Dancing Girls

Source: Dancing Girls

Thinking

“Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

War, Truth, Lie, Help

“There is no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Another Roadside Attraction (1971)

People, Understanding

“every human heart beat is a universe of possibilities.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Universe, Heart

“The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: Sexuality and the Psychology of Love

Life, Behavior

“These Atlantikoinonia. They’re human? (Acheron)
What else would they be? Turnips? (Tory)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

World, Freedom, Fight

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

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

Faith, Feeling, Faith