Quotes about humanity
page 6
"Feminism: An Agenda" (1983)
Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987
"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).
Quoted on Contemporary art, http://coolturamagazine.com/xabier-lezama-mitologia-vasca/, February 15, 2020.
“There is a human tendency to desire and even artificially create a sense of certainty.”
A Divine Image, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
“Belief in the unreal can comfort the human mind, but it also weakens it.”
Raised by Wolves, season 1, episode 1. Mother.
Source: "Can Socialists Be Happy?" https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/can-socialists-be-happy/, Tribune (20 December 1943). Published under the name ‘John Freeman’.
Source: Speech in the House of Lords on the agricultural depression (29 April 1879), reported in The Times (30 April 1879), p. 8
“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
“Our dedication to good actions as human beings is what most nourishes our souls”
Source: Posted on @angelovulpini, Instagram (June 15, 2019)
“The greatest of human existence is existence itself, because it's a mystery”
Source: Posted on instagram @angelovulpini, September 2nd, 2021.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTVVtsfrRvh/
Source: Posted on instagram @angelovulpini, September 2nd, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTVVtsfrRvh/
Source: https://quotepark.com/suggestions/create-quote/author/?originator_name=Angelo%20Vulpini
Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53
1993 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from [hhttps://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ the original] on May 27, 2022. As quoted in: Louise Melling (Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU) (September 23, 2020): For Justice Ginsburg, Abortion Was About Equality. In: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527144342/https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality from the original https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality on May 27, 2022.
1990s
Source: Radiorama de Occidente. "La Otra Historia". Rock & Pop 1480 AM. Guadalajara, Mexico.
“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
Variant: Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Source: Lolita
“The human soul is very much older than the human mind.”
Source: Truth and Method
“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
Source: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 35
Context: For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
“I believe in integrity. Dogs have it. Humans are sometimes lacking it.”
“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.”
Source: The Cat Who Came for Christmas
Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul
“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense… human rights invented America.”
Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)
Context: America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea.
Context: I have just been talking about forces of potential destruction that mankind has developed, and how we might control them. It is equally important that we remember the beneficial forces that we have evolved over the ages, and how to hold fast to them.
One of those constructive forces is enhancement of individual human freedoms through the strengthening of democracy, and the fight against deprivation, torture, terrorism and the persecution of people throughout the world. The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language.
Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity, and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.
I believe with all my heart that America must always stand for these basic human rights — at home and abroad. That is both our history and our destiny.
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea. Our social and political progress has been based on one fundamental principle — the value and importance of the individual. The fundamental force that unites us is not kinship or place of origin or religious preference. The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.
The Crisis No. V
Source: 1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.
Source: The One-Straw Revolution
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character”
Source: Browning's Paracelsus: Being the Text of Browning's Poem
“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way… God can give us the perfect way.”
Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
"Him with His Foot in His Mouth," from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
General sources
“Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste.”
“Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.”
Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
“So long as you are ready to die for Humanity, the life of your country is immortal.”
On the Duties of Man (1844-58)
Source: Pierre or the Ambiguities
"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Chicago Defender (1 April 1998)
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)
Context: It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
“All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being… he can't be any worse.”
“Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me and then show me the place where he was hanged.”
Variant: Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.
Source: Justine
Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 8
Context: A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."
Source: Anthills of the Savannah
Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
“It is a human defect--to try to know one's self by the self of another.”
“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
Source: A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered
“Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.”
Last message to the world (written 1957); read at his funeral (1963)
“I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!”
Source: Castle in the Air
“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”