Quotes About Humanity

MERCY. It was a word she'd rarely encountered

People were so strange and sometimes you got tired just thinking about them.

How's things, man?" The black man extended his hand for a handshake. Mathematical formulae were jotted on the sleeve of his shirt, right up to the elbow. "Very good," said Peter. It had never occurred to him before that dark-skinned people didn't have the option of jotting numbers on their skin. You learned something new about human diversity every day.

Coincidences like that served as a reminder that, variations in pigment aside, humans were all part of the same species.

The fucking world is falling apart and it still doesn't rate as an emergency. Do you really think they're gonna panic over us?

Ach,' she says. 'There ain't nuffink in this world but men and women, is there? So you got to care about 'em, ain't you, else what you got to care about?

In the eyes of God, all men and women are naked. Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul.

El hombre no sólo vive de alta cultura.

People and their dwellings were such a thin dust on the surface of the globe, like invisible specks of bacteria on an orange, and the feeble lights of kebab shops and supermarkets failed utterly to register on the infinities of space above. If it weren't for God, the almighty vacuum would be too crushing to endure, but once God was with you, it was a different story.

but the world remains a dangerous place and we remain—merely by being human—vulnerable to the horrors that humans can cause.

Someone at work said to me this morning, "Where is God in all this?" I didn't rise to the bait. I can never understand why people ask that question. The real question for the bystanders of tragedy is "Where are WE in all this?" I've always tried to come up with answers to that challenge. I don't know if I can at the moment. Pray for me.

It's higher consciousness that causes all our griefs and tortures, don't you think?

Someone at work said to me this morning, "Where is God in all this?" I didn't rise to the bait. I can never understand why people ask that question. The real question for the bystanders of tragedy is "Where are WE in all this?

His greatest fear, as he dissolved into the dark, was that he would never see other humans the same way again.

there is no glory in punishing

It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

It is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man's disappearance.

With humanity, life has ended up with a living creature that never quite finds itself in the right place, a living creature destined to wander and endlessly make mistakes.

Es preciso que la justicia criminal, en lugar de vengarse, castigue al fin. Esta necesidad de un castigo sin suplicio se formula en primer lugar como un grito del corazón o de la naturaleza indignada: en el peor de los asesinos, hay una cosa al menos que debe respetarse cuando se castiga: su "humanidad".

Women's rights must not be treated as trivial adjuncts to great questions of war and peace, poverty and development. What's at stake are not lifestyles but lives.

What does it mean to be human? What are we doing here on this planet? What should we do with all the beauty and the horror? I spent a year as a hospice chaplain and what did I learn? That everyone wants to live. Even if just to gaze out a window at the sky.

But you're - your'e not-' Ryan stops, swallows, starts again. 'You're not human,' he says.

It's always easier,' he offered at last, 'when you feel these things yourself; seeing them in other people reveals just how ugly they are.