Quotes about humanity
page 35
The portion after the second semicolon is widely paraphrased or misquoted. Two examples are "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" and "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
1910s
Source: "The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917); later published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race.”
Appendix
1980s, At Home (1988)
Context: I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single... well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years. So you see I am ecumenical in my dislike for the Book. But like it or not, the Book is there; and because of it people die; and the world is in danger.
“Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.”
“Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that humans created.”
Stanza 3.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Context: That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
“Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Dead Until Dark
“We’re only human.”
“One of us, anyway. The other’s a reptile.”
“Harsh, Annabelle. Very harsh.”
Source: Match Me If You Can
“A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.”
“The truth of human freedom lies in the love that breaks down barriers.”
“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”
Source: The Book Thief
“Are you two having some sort of strange human thing that you can’t follow what I’m saying? (Simi)”
Source: Dance with the Devil
1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time — the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts… Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564)
Context: Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
“It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.”
“We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.”
Source: Well Witched
Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Source: The Lay of the Land
“I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.”
Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information
“Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human? Perfection is a flaw disguised as control.”
Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Generation X (1991)
Source: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
“A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.”
Source: God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries between Faith and Politics
Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect
“It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off”
Source: subUrbia
“Because faithfulness is not a human question, but a divine one.”
The Secret Scripture
Source: Murder on the Orient Express
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p.15
"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
“All human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.”
“There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.”
Source: Existentialism and Human Emotions
"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)
Source: A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
“Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.”
Source: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Source: Winter Moon
“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Hell? Mr. Human Boy Person? Can you hear the Simi? Or are you dead? Hello? (Simi)”
Source: Infinity