Quotes about humanity
page 66

“During the 1960s and 1970s, when cartographers were embracing the communication model and a behavioral approach to empirical research, psychology was undergoing a revolution in its perspective on what to study and how to study it. Psychologists began to realize that stimulus-response laws do not explain human perception or behavior (any more than the gravity models used by geographers can explain spatial interaction).”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 7-8

Law, Behavior, Communication, Study

“In this country — the most favored beneath the bending skies — we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child — and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Federal Court statement (1918)

Death, People, Youth, Age

“It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory or rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity", "truth", it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg. 27 & 28, italics are Feyerabend's
Against Method (1975)

Truth, History, Idea

“A perfectly evil human society is unthinkable: it would be self-destructive. We therefore deny that any society of absolutely evil spirits could be permanent. Evil in short, cannot be a unifying spiritual principle: to put it colloquially, there must be some good in the Devil or he must ultimately destroy himself. It is certain that the Devil cannot be the creative source of evil in the same way that God is the creative source of good.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

p, 125
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

God, Way, Evil

“Progress of mankind is the decadence of humanity.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 15
The Other Wife (2003)

“Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

As quoted in "Free-Market Boring…Losing Consciousness" http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg012401.shtml (24 January 2001), by Jonah Goldberg, National Review

“I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, "Here is one hand," and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, "and here is another." And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there is no need to multiply examples.”

G. E. Moore (1873–1958) British philosopher

"Proof of an External World," Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (1939).

Way

“She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 13 (at page 118)

Beauty, Feeling, Flowers, Tree

“The proudest human that walks the earth is a free American citizen.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Talk at the Commercial Club of Chicago http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (21 May 1948) 1940s

“Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Truth, Faith, Law

“We tried to make our characters as human and empathetic as possible. Instead of merely emphasizing their super feats, we attempted to make their personal life and personal problems as realistic and as interesting as possible. We wanted to make them seem like real people whom the reader would like to spend time with and want to know better.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

Huffington Post, 28 March 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/stan-lee-interview_n_1459536.html

Life, People, Problem, Time

“The battle between Good and Evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between Good and Evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and… they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this became cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

"GRRM Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History", interview with TIME Entertainment http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/ (18 April 2011)

People, Thinking, Decision, Evil

“Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour?”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America (1841) 17th of "20 Questions to the Human Race".

Happiness, Country

“The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978)

Strong

“enlightenment should be a human right.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Substance, Pressure, Beyond, Pulse in Matter, p. 225
Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007)

“I can say this. I believe that the human mind, or even the mind of a cat, is more interesting in its complexity than an entire galaxy if it is devoid of life.”

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher

Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29688355 obituary by Colm Mulcahy, BBC News Magazine, October 21, 2014

Life, Cats

“Human beings are largely motivated by their emotional repertoire, manifested through their need for attachment, physical security, a sense of belonging and a positive personal and collective identity.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p. 186

Motivation, Sense, Personality

“I will not seek the battle-field —
The men I there should meet,
What have they done to me to make
Shedding their life-blood sweet?
It is the veriest madness man
In maddest mood can frame,
To feed the earth with human gore,
And then to call it fame.
I have been wrong'd; but were my wrong
The deadliest wrong ere done,
I would not slay my enemy,
But bid him still live on :—
And I should deem my vengeance more
Than the death-wound in strife—
What ills can death inflict like those
Heap'd on each hour of life?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

19th August 1826) Metrical Fragments - No. 1 (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Life, Death, Men, Mood

“I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I’m a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.”

Primo Levi book The Mirror Maker

"The Premise," The Mirror Maker (1986)

Search, Memory, Time, Clothes

“Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Tires to Sandals", p. 324
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Hope, Nature

“I’ve only known a vegan life and have been constantly teaching others of the joys and benefits of being a vegan … As an adult, I THANK my Mother profusely for being extremely honest with me as a kid and for never hiding the truth about milk, “meat”, animal experimentation … There is speciesism and that is about as cruel as it gets because it sets the stage and practice for cruelty amongst human beings. … Discrimination is discrimination—as abuse is abuse … regardless of an animals human or nonhuman form, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation or level of intelligence/knowledge it should be our birthright to LIVE our lives peacefully and harmoniously without inflicting pain on others. People who inflict intentional pain without moral or ethical regard for other human or nonhuman animals are just reminders of how much further we have to go until oppression is completely eradicated.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson" http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/interview-with-seba-johnson/, The Ghosts in Our Machine (2014).

Life, Pain, People, Truth

“At its beginnings there was very powerful meditation on the presence of Christ in the oppressed Indians, which objectively pointed toward a christology of the "body of Christ." Guamán Poma, for example, said, "By faith we know clearly that where there is a poor person there is Jesus Christ himself," and Bartolomé de las Casas declared, "In the Indies I leave Jesus Christ, our God, being whipped and afflicted, and buffeted and crucified, not once but thousands of times, as often as the Spaniards assault and destroy those people." But this original christological insight did not thrive, and what became the tradition was a christology based on the dogmatic formulas, in which— however well they were known and understood— what was stressed was the divinity of Christ rather than his real and lived humanity.”

Jon Sobrino (1938) Spanish theologian

Source: Jesus the Liberator (1991), p. 11

God, People, Faith, Affliction

“The philosophy of self-denial also taught the brotherhood of man, based on the Stoical belief that every human being without distinction possesses a spark of divinity that is in communion with God, who in the Stoical system is called Logos (Word, Reason, Meaning)—the word John's Gospel uses to describe Jesus.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

God

“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
Asimov: Those that have proved permanent—the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again—were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin "movers" were even behind the other "solely" historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church—like John Huss—fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Plowboy: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science—and scientists—are especially important now?
Asimov: I do think so, and as a result it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don't want scientists to become a priesthood. We don't want society's technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows—to "bring down the law from Mt. Sinai"—because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.
Plowboy: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it's difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.
Asimov: Well, I don't expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It's not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to "follow the game" well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
Every subject of worldwide importance—each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends—involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don't understand what the decisions are all about.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, Death, People, World

“What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

God

“The arithmetization of mathematics… which began with Weierstrass… had for its object the separation of purely mathematical concepts, such as number and correspondence and aggregate, from intuitional ideas, which mathematics had acquired from long association with geometry and mechanics.
These latter, in the opinion of the formalists, are so firmly entrenched in mathematical thought that in spite of the most careful circumspection in the choice of words, the meaning concealed behind these words, may influence our reasoning. For the trouble with human words is that they possess content, whereas the purpose of mathematics is to construct pure thought.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

p, 125
Number: The Language of Science (1930)

Mathematics, Idea

“[modern art is the story of certain peoples'] desire to get rid of what is dead in human experience, to get rid of concepts, whether aesthetic or metaphysical or ethical or social, that, being garbed in the costumes of the past, get in the way of their enjoyment.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Lecture at Mount Holyoke College, August 1944; later published as 'A Tour of the Sublime', in 'Tiger's Eye', 15 Dec. 1948; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory' 1940s

People, Art, Way, Past

“For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 224)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“Marx imagined the end of scarcity would bring the end of history. He could not bring himself to see that a world without scarcity had already been achieved - in the prehistoric societies that he and Engels lumped together as 'primitive communism'. Hunter-gatherers were less burdened by labour than the majority of mankind at any later stage, but their sparse communities were completely dependent on the Earth's bounty. Natural catastrophe could wipe them out at any time. Marx could not accept the constraint that was the price of the hunter-gatherers' freedom. Instead, animated by the faith that humans are destined to master the Earth, he insisted that freedom from labour could be achieved without any restraints on their desires. This was only the Brethren of the Free Spirit's apocalyptic fantasy returning as an Enlightenment utopia.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: Twentieth-century anti-capitalists, THE Phalanstery and The Medieval Brethren of The Spirit (p. 167-8)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Faith, Imagination, History

“It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Beyond Belief 2006 conference
2000s

People, Religion, Problem, Thinking

“However, the absence of perfect concealment does not imply the presence of active advertisement, and if fertility were advertised in humans, we would presumably not need to employ sophisticated experimental methods to demonstrate its detectability.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 151

Perfection

“Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 1, section 4.
The Cunning Man (1994)

“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 11

Life

“Differences in reaction to toxic substances vary considerably between species so that the value of these tests remains doubtful. Although thalidomide was extensively tested on animals in several countries, its terrible properties were not discovered. Conversely, penicillin, the greatest medical discovery of the century, was not extensively tested on animals before its miraculous therapeutic qualities were demonstrated in human patients. If it had been fully tested on animals its high toxicity for guinea pigs would have almost certainly prevented its clinical use.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

Experiments on Animals (1971)

Animals, Country

“It's true that the average human in the Xeelee universe can't eat Jell-O with a straw without accident[al]ly removing an eye but these particular humans start off no stupider than than any other human of their era and proceed to breed themselves into imbecility. Well, farther into imbecility.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[cvo12q$oii$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Stupidity, Lying, Universe

“I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate… seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar, who, as Suetonius testifies, laughed at such things and yet was happy. …And so should all who reflect on the human imagination, and the effects of the emotions, laugh at such notions; whatever Lavater and others, who have gone dreaming with him in the matter, may produce to the contrary.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz1kRKDMbUMC (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).

Happiness, People, Dreams, Hope

“God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of a universal brotherhood, and man must not gainsay the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound or scorching in the tropical regions; in the lap of luxury or in the wild hardihood of the primeval forest; belting the globe in a tired search for rest, or quieting through life in the heart of ancestral woods; gathering all the decencies around him like a garment, or battling in fierce raid of crime against a world which has disowned him, there is an inner humanness which binds me to that man by a primitive and indissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I cannot dissever the relationship. He is my brother, and I cannot release myself from the obligation to do him good.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 41.

Life, God, World, Search

“You know that you are a human being, and I know that I am the Avatar. It is my whole life!”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

To Paul Brunton in 1930, as quoted in Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba, Manifestation, Inc. 1986, by Bhau Kalchuri, p. 1349.
Lord Meher (1986)

Life

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (13 July 1925)

Men, Books, Age, School

“The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIII

Imagination

“Humans have spent (10k+) years learning to fight and debate with the other side, and almost no time learning to listen and empathize.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 18.

Learning, Time, Fight

“I think China is in a chaos now and it could be more chaos. It’s an orderly chaos. It’s a party that ruthlessly violates every human’s basic rights to serve its own purpose.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Digital Activism in China, 2010

Thinking

“Musicians who have listened to birds believe [that birds derive pleasure from singing] much more than ornithologists, who are terrified of being accused of anthropomorphism… Having studied thousands of hours of birdsong from around the world, I am convinced some species possess an aesthetic sense, however limited compared to ours. It is part of human egotism to believe that only we have active minds.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

Pleasure, World, Bird, Sense

“To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 237.

“Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Aeneis, Book VI, lines 374–377.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

God, Night

“Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means "submission."”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.
The Intelligence Agents (1996)

God, Religion, Reality

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

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

Statement to German anti-Nazi diplomat and author Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein around 1941, as quoted in his book Towards the Further Shore : An Autobiography (1968)
Attributed in posthumous publications

God, People, Quotes, Support

“It is an act of cruelty, of barbarism, to kill, to strike unconscious, and to cut the throat of animals, who do no harm to anyone, the way we do; because they are sensitive to injury and pain just as we are, regardless of what is said vainly, falsely, and ridiculously by our new Cartesians, who regard them as purely machines without soul and without feelings … This is a ridiculous opinion, a pernicious principle, and a detestable doctrine, because it clearly tends to stifle in the hearts of men all feelings of kindness, of gentleness, and of humanity that they might have toward these poor animals. … Blessed are the nations that treat them kindly and favorably, who are compassionate toward their miseries and their pains; but cursed are the nations that treat them cruelly, who tyrannize over them, who enjoy shedding their blood, and who are avid to eat their flesh.”

Jean Meslier (1664–1729) French priest

In Œuvres complètes (Paris: Anthropos, 1970–1972), t. I, 210-18; quoted in Matthieu Ricard, A Plea for the Animals, trans. Sherab Chödzin Kohn (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2016), p. 19 https://books.google.it/books?id=bTLuDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA19 Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier

Men, Pain, Way, Feeling

“Countless generations of students and general readers have been intrigued by this deeply human book, which half reveals and half conceals the fascinating yet enigmatic personality of its author.”

Robert Gordis (1908–1992) American rabbi and theologian

"Koheleth - the Man and his World" (1955), preface, p. vii

Books, Personality

“Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 95

Understanding, Science

“Those people you saw—the realborn—are born without a plan. They’re born because biology tells humans to make more humans; but it doesn’t consider what to do with them after that. Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they’re going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it. Sad. And inefficient.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 86)

Life, People, Sadness, Understanding

“The true source of freedom is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians believe it is he who fully discloses the human potential for virtue and goodness, and it is he who liberates us from sin and darkness.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Inter-religious Meeting (17 July 2008)

Freedom, Personality

“Becoming a human doing was exactly what society needed. But for an individual man, becoming a human doing was his undoing.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

“You look dandy in the sky but you don’t scare me
Cause I got you here in my eye
In this lifetime you got my human gets me blues”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

My Human Gets Me Blues
Trout Mask Replica (1969)

“As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, in the case of human beings this metaphysic is reversed: a person’s existence precedes his essence—he is a subject among objects. The danger, says Sartre, following Heidegger, is that he will “fall” into the world of objects, becoming ever after the prisoner of arbitrary strictures masquerading as universal principles.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 3 (p. 47)

World, Universe, Personality

“I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

"Thoughts about the Person from Porlock (continued)"
Selected Poems (1962)

Smile

“1. The human mind is so constructed that it must see every perception in a time-relation—in an order—and every perception of an object in a space-relation—as outside or beside our perceiving selves.
2. These necessary time-relations are reducible to Number, and they are studied in the theory of number, arithmetic and algebra.
3. These necessary space-relations are reducible to Position and Form, and they are studied in geometry.
Mathematics, therefore, studies an aspect of all knowing, and reveals to us the universe as it presents itself, in one form, to mind. To apprehend this and to be conversant with the higher developments of mathematical reasoning, are to have at hand the means of vitalizing all teaching of elementary mathematics.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

David Eugene Smith, "Editor's Introduction," in: The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=NKoAAAAAMAAJ (1906)

Mathematics, Study, Universe, Time

“He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 5 (pp. 130-131)

Men, Stupidity, Religion, Beauty

“Unity…. Unity of purpose is shown by continuity, or the proper relationship of the parts with each other, and with the whole as one sees it best expressed in the human form. Unity of mass is obtained by giving predominance of mass to some one feature…”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Parting

“The spirit of religious persecution is not the special failing of any particular faith, but springs eternal in the human breast.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, quoted in British esotericist and Fortune biographer Gareth Knight's Experience of the Inner Worlds

Faith, Spring

“The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), September 25, 2001. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/01_09_25bampac.htm. 2009

Truth, Soul, Idea, Heart

“Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owned to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

World, Beauty, Nature

“The Imagination has always called for a return to the truest fundamentalism contained in the question "What does it mean to be a human being?" Needless to say, this is a question that deserves the deepest and most patient development. It will have to suffice for the present to say that our reigning social reality forbids— structurally, politically, violently— the broad posing of this question.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Imagination, Question, Reality

“The question becomes, I suppose, one of value. Knowing that the Vision’s complete personality/memory/intelligence was downloaded into a computer in Titan (was it Titan? Memory blurs) allowed me to scrape his brain in my VisionQuest story, since everything could be restored with a literal flip of a switch. Should something that can be so easily copied and retrieved be treated as having the same intrinsic value as a human being? Should any of the human Avengers, for instance, ever risk their lives on behalf of the Vision? My vote would be no (as some of you have probably already guessed)—but I would say that even if it were not possible to restore or “save” the Vision in any other way. He is a “toaster.””

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2006
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=15591
The humanity of the Vision, an android hero whose body was once the original Human Torch

Way, Intelligence, Question, Memory

“King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare — or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.”

Paul Scofield (1922–2008) English actor

Quoted in Royah Nikkhah, "Scofield's Lear voted the greatest Shakespeare performance" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/22/nbard22.xml, Telegraph.co.uk (2004-08-22)

“In this world, the question has already been asked. The world has already started to face the problems, the problems which are vital for the human race. There is no need to discuss the problems, but I would like to present my opinion. In the midst of all this, I still sincerely think that this Knowledge, the Knowledge of God, the Knowledge of our Creator, is our solution. Many people might not think so, and carry a completely different opinion, but my opinion is that since man came on this planet earth, he has always been taking from it. Remember, this planet Earth is not infinite, it is finite, and though it has a lot to give, it is limited. Maybe now we can somehow manage to stagger along, cutting our standards of living, cutting gas, reducing the speed limit more, but the next very terrifying question is What about the future? I think this Knowledge which I have to offer this world, free of charge, is the answer. For if everybody can understand that everybody is a brother and sister, and this world is a gift, not a human-owned planet, and have the true understanding of such, we'll definitely bring peace, tranquillity, love and Grace, which we need so badly. I urge this world to try. I do not claim to be God, but do claim I can establish peace on this Earth by our Lord's Grace, and everyone's joint effort.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Proclamation for 1975, signed Sant Ji Maharaj the name by which Prem Rawat was known at that time. Divine Times (Vol.4 Issue.1, February 1, 1975)
1970s

Love, God, People, World

“He's the kind of man who was born to rise and rise: a human elevator.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Stone Gods

Source: The Stone Gods (2007), p.7

“The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

On the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in The Nation (31 August 1927)

Men, Justice, Reading, Heart

“America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D. C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.”

Yi-Fu Tuan (1930) Chinese-American geographer

Shadows and Light, epilogue, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture (1993).

Wisdom, Universe, Housing

“In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Attributed

Life, God, Beauty, Heart

“I watched the living soldiers pass by the dead at the roadside without a glance, and the dead scarcely looked human. They resembled wax mannequins thrown from a show window, lying about in grotesque, inhuman postures, arms pointing toward the sky, legs frozen as though they were running. Their faces were bloodless, waxy white.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Twelve Months That Changed the World ( Google Books link http://books.google.com/books?id=Emc1AQAAIAAJ&q), A.A. Knopf, 1943. Twelve Months That Changed the World (1943)

Lying, Dead

“I believe that there are things which humanity will never fully understand, for in the understanding of them, we will no longer be "human." One of these things is the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I don't know how it works, and I don't want to know. It's a big universe and even with our limited understanding of it, it's pretty clear that the universe is in no way equipped to keep up with the bureaucracy of its particles and/or strings. There are things lurking in the dark, unwatched, unguarded recesses of reality. Things as beyond you or I as we are beyond an amoeba. It is quite obvious that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers draw their power from these unknowable horrors. They probably found it in the core of a meteor still half buried in the Earth, hideously pulsing with a light not unlike the color of blood and hate. So use your Magic Erasers while you still can, before they run out of meteor or they discover it causes cervical cancer or testicular cancer in men and women respectively.”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=070106

Women, Men, Hate, Color

“The 4 aspects of each of the media actually constitute the four features of all metaphors. In other words, all human technologies whatever are, in the fullest sense, linguistic outerings, or utterings, of man.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 275

Sense

“His overriding lesson for thinkers like Hutton was that scientists, even those occupied by an apparently ‘concrete’ discipline like geology, need to be careful not just about what they claim to know but also about how they claim to know it. Human reason is a fragile thing and prone to be overthrown by suggestibility.”

Stephen Baxter (1957) author

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 13, “Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion” (p. 124)

“Which do you think came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before or after the vessels evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn’t beating, why did it start when it had no awareness of blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that caused it to circulate around the body? The marvelous human body (and the bodies of all the other creatures) consists of so many amazingly interdependent parts: a heart, lungs (to oxygenate the blood), kidneys (to filter wastes from the blood), blood vessels, arteries, blood, skin (to protect it all), etc. The intricate codependence of just the respiratory system and the circulatory system—not to mention all the other bodily systems—is difficult to explain.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Bird, Thinking, Fish, Heart

“The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“The only really consistent humanitarian is the one who is not a flesh-eater; and great, I am satisfied, will be the results, both to the human family and to the animal race, as children are wisely taught and judiciously directed along this line.”

Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958) American author

Source: Every Living Creature (1899), p. 30

Children, Family, Animals

“Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Lady Thinks She Is Thirty

Time

“The question of the origin of the universe is one of the most exciting topics for a scientist to deal with. It reaches far beyond its purely scientific significance, since it is related to human existence, to mythology, and to religion. Furthermore, it deals with questions are connected with the fundamental structure of matter, with elementrary particles.”

Victor Frederick Weisskopf (1908–2002) Austrian-born American theoretical physicist

[Victor F. Weisskopf, American Scientist, The Origin of the Universe: An introduction to recent theoretical developments that are linking cosmology and particle physics, 71, 5, September-October 1983, 473–480, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27852239]

Religion, Question, Universe

“To opine that, unknown to humans, God had hitherto created some people to be homosexuals and lesbians (i. e., sexual orientations) is tantamount to creating God in our own image and introducing a cancerous element into the fabric of the African understanding of marriage and family.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

God, Marriage, People, Family

“The first part of "The Double Axe" was written during the war and finished a year before the war ended, and it bears the scars; but the poem is not primarily concerned with that grim folly. Its burden, as of some previous work of mine, is to present a philosophical attitude, which might be called Inhumanism, a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence. It seems time that our race began to think as an adult does, rather than like an egocentric baby or insane person. This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist, though two or three people have said so and may again. It involves no falsehoods, and is a means of maintaining sanity in slippery times; it has objective truth and human value. It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy. It neutralizes fanaticism and wild hopes; but it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Preface to The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948)

Love, Hate, War, People

“violate the human rights of others', is impractical and fraught with grave consequences as it puts an almost impossible burden on the lawyer of pre-judging guilt; and (more important) it precludes the person charged with infringing the human rights of another (such as one accused of murder) the right to be defended by a 'lawyer of his choice”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

in my country, a guaranteed constitutional right.”
On his view on representing lawyers as human rights activists on accepting briefs of clients
Fali S. Nariman, ‘Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

Personality, Country

“Strict ethical guidelines need to be developed in anticipation of significant technological and biotechnological advances in order to guarantee human dignity.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.29

“If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that. Instead of only one religion leading to one ultimate truth, we have many different religions with no common origin, all constantly sharding into ever more deeply-divided denominations, seeking conflicting truths, and each somehow claiming divine guidance despite their ongoing divergence in every direction.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Wisdom, God, Truth, Books

“That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox…”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 [elipsis in original]

“Well, despite what many gay “marriage” activists say, having two mummies or two daddies does not replace God’s design of one mum and one dad. God designed marriage—for one man and one woman—from the very beginning and blessed this union and said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This is God’s design for the family! And since God is the all-wise, all-knowing Creator, what He designed is obviously the only true way for us, not what sinful, fallible human beings try to make. Of course, no family is perfect—we live in a fallen world that is groaning from sin—but we are not at liberty to change the design for marriage and family that was given to us by our Creator. When we do, disaster is around the corner. I encourage you to be bold in standing on God’s Word and refusing to compromise with man’s ideas about what a marriage or a family should look like. We need to unashamedly uphold the design given to us by our Creator.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Gay “Marriage”—Tragic for America’s Children https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/07/13/gay-marriage-tragic-americas-children/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 13, 2015) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, Marriage, World, Family

“In Vienna, Modernism had three main characteristics. The first was the new view of the human mind as being largely irrational by nature. …they questioned what constitutes reality, what lies below the surface appearances of people, objects, and events. …They discovered that …people harbor not only unconscious erotic feelings, but also unconscious aggressive impulses that are directed against themselves as well as against others. Freud later called these dark impulses the death instinct.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Death, People, Feeling, Question

“For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!"”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

answers the other: "To all the Three; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion."
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Religion, Nature, Teachers, Time

“And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry — what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you! You devote the useful energy of your mind to working out the scheme of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices and burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind together two countries which nature has separated. But once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel — you see others of them returning home carrying with them, maybe, a few pence, and the undoubted seeds of consumption; you see human corpses — the results of a groveling greed — as landmarks along each yard of your road; and, when the railroad is finished, you see, lastly, that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army…”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sadness, Dreams, Disappointment, Home

“Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light… We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think."…, but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"Foreword", Lanterns & Lances (1961)
From other writings

Life, World, Fear, Thinking

“Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: PART TWO: winning industrial-use of lisp: Re: Norvig's latest paper on Lisp http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6cce7cd281ff6126 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Business, Time, Fight

“Since Darwin, scientists have agreed that there is no ‘magical’ essential difference between human and other animals, biologically-speaking. Why then do we make an almost total distinction morally? If all organisms are on one physical continuum, then we should also be on the same moral continuum. … The only arguments in favour of painful experiments on animals are: 1) that the advancement of knowledge justifies all evils – well does it? 2) that possible benefits for our own species justify mistreatment of other species – this may be a fairly strong argument when it applies to experiments where the chances of suffering are minimal and the probability of aiding applied medicine is great, but even so it is still just ‘speciesism’, and as such it is a selfish emotional argument rather than a reasoned one.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

" Speciesism https://books.google.it/books?id=Rz30CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT59" (1970). Reported in Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century by Richard D. Ryder (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2011), Chapter 2.

Pain, Knowledge, Strong, Suffering

“Just as Dr. King was a disciple of Gandhi and Christ, we must now be Dr. King's disciples.
Dr. King challenged us to work for a greater humanity. I only hope that we are worthy of his challenge.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)

Hope, Christ

“Nature cannot achieve the first-best outcomes to which those like Kant aspire because the latter are not incentive-compatible. That is to say, they are achievable only if the human beings who live in the society act in a manner that is incompatible with their nature.”

Ken Binmore (1940) British economist

Game Theory and the Social Contract (1994), p. 152 http://books.google.com/books?id=8cDiGo2REBIC&pg=PA152

Nature

“There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it."”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Babies".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Family, Water, Baby

“I was born in 1953, a child of the Cold War era, raised amid the constant fear of a conflict with the potential to destroy humanity. Whatever other dangers may exist, no such fear exists today. Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. That is a prize beyond value.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Martin Bentham, "You're the boss, Tony", The Sun, 28 May 1997, p. 2.
Speech at a summit in Paris between NATO and Russia, 27 May 1997.
1990s

War, Children, Fear

“Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,
shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Lady Geraldine's Courtship http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/ebbrowning/bl-ebbrown-togeorge1.htm, st. 41 (1844).

Heart

“The modern world inherits the Christian view in which salvation is played out in history. In Christian myth human events follow a design known only to God; the history of humankind is an ongoing story of redemption. This is an idea that informs virtually all of western thought – not least when it is intensely hostile to religion. From Christianity onwards, human salvation would be understood (at least in the west) as involving movement through time. All modern philosophies in which history is seen as a process of human emancipation – whether through revolutionary change or incremental improvement – are garbled versions of this Christian narrative, itself a garbled version of the original message of Jesus.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Revelation of Philip K. Dick (p. 60)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

God, Hostility, World, Religion

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People, Hope, Way, Home

“What we mean by the laws of nature, are those laws which are deduced from that series of events, which, by divine appointment, follow each other in the moral and physical world; the former of which we shall here have occasion principally to consider, the present question altogether, respecting the moral government of God — a consideration which our author has entirely neglected, in his estimation of the credibility of miracles. Examining the question therefore upon this principle, it is manifest, that the extraordinary nature of the fact is no ground for disbelief, provided such a fact, in, a moral point of view, was, from the condition of man, become necessary; for in that case, the Deky, by dispensing his assistance in proportion to our wants, acted upon the same principle as in his more 'ordinary operations. For however ' opposite the physical effects may be, if their moral tendency be the same, they form a part of the jmoral law. Now in those actions which are called miracles, the Deity is directed by the same moral principle as in his usual dispensations; and therefore being influenced by the same motive to accomplish the same end, the laws of God's moral government are not violated, such laws being established by the motives and the ends produced, and not by the means employed. To prove therefore the moral laws to be the same in those actions called miraculous, as in common events, it is not the actions thetnselves which are to be considered, but the principles by which they were directed, and their consequences, for if these be the same, the Deity acts by the same laws. And here, moral analogy will be found to confirm the truth of the miracles recorded in scripture. But as the moral government of God is directed by motives which lie beyond the reach of human investigation, we have no principles by which we can judge concerning the probability of the happening of any new event which respects the moral world; we cannot therefore pronounce any extraordinary event of that nature to be a violation of the moral law of God's dispensations; but we can nevertheless judge of its agreement with that law, so far as it has fallen under our observation. But our author leaves out the consideration of God's moral government, and reasons simply -on the facts which arc said to have nappened, without any reference to an end; we will therefore examine how far his conclusions are just upon this principle.
He defines miracles to be "a violation of the laws of nature;" he undoubtedly means the physical laws, as no part of his reasoning has any reference to them in a moral point of view. Now these laws must be deduced, either from his own view of events only, or from that, and testimony jojntly; and if testimony beallowed on one part, it ought also to be admitted on the other, granting that there is no impossibility in the fact attested. But the laws by which the Deity governs the universe can, at best, only be inferred from the whole series of his dispensations from the beginning of the world; testimony must therefore necessarily be admitted in establishing these laws. Now our author, in deducing the laws of nature, rejects all well authenticated miraculous events, granted to be possible, and therefore not altogether incredible and to be rejected without examination, and thence establishes a law to prove against their credibility; but the proof of a position ought to proceed upon principles which are totally independent of any supposition of its being either true or falser. His conclusion therefore is not deduced by just reasoning from acknowledged principles, but it is a necessary consequence of his own arbitrary supposition. "Tis a miracle," says he, "that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country." Now, testimony, confirmed by every proof which can tend to establish a true matter of fact, asserts that such an event; has happened. But our author argues against the credibility of this, because it is contrary to the laws of nature; and in establishing these laws, he rejects all such extraordinary facts, although they are authenticated by all the evidence which such facts can possibly admit of; taking thereby into consideration, events of that kind only which have fallen within the sphere of his own observations, as if the whole series of God's dispensations were necessarily included in the course of a few years. But who shall thus circumscribe the operations of divine power and infinite wisdom, and say, "Hitherto shall thou go, and no further."”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Before he rejected circumstances of this kind in establishing the laws of nature, he should, at least, have shewn, that we have not all that evidence for them which we might "have had" upon supposition that they were true ; he should also have shewn, in a moral point of view, that the events were inconsistent with the ordinary operations of Providence ; and that there was no end to justify the means. Whereas, on the contrary, there is all the evidence for them which a real matter of fact can possibly have ; they are perfectly consistent with all the moral dispensations of Providence and at the same time that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most unexceptionably attested, we discover a moral intention in the miracle, which very satisfactorily accounts for that exertion of divine power? Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 48; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA259," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 259-261

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

Quotes about humanity page 66

Quotes about humanity
page 66