Quotes About Humanity

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen

History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.

And it isn't enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.

Is not parody the eternal lot of man?

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil.

To be mortal is the most basic human experience and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.

She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

And Jakub realized that this child had done no harm, that he was not guilty of anything, and yet had been born with bad eyes and would have them forever. And he reflected further that what he had held against others was something given, something they came into the world with and carried with them like a heavy wire fence. He reflected that he had no privileged right to high-mindedness and that the highest degree of high-mindedness is to love people even though they are murderers.

The consciousness of my own baseness has done nothing to reconcile me to the baseness of others. Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. I have no desire for that slimy brotherhood.

Can't you come up with something different? And therein lies the whole of mans plight.Human time does not turn in a circle;it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy:happiness is the longing for repetition.

In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.

Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror and nothing but horror. Paul was pleased that man was gradually covering the whole earth with concrete. It was as if he were watching a cruel murderess being walled up.

The entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout 'We are all writers!' For everyone is pained with the thought of disappearing, unheard, and unseen into an indifferent universe and because of that, everyone wants, wither there's still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.

The physical contact with people who struck and trampled and killed one another seemed far worse to him than a solitary death in the purity of the waters.

Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts.

Pravda, u stvari, i ne treba da nas previše zanima. Pravda nije ljudska stvar. Postoji pravda slijepih i krutih zakona, a osim nje možda i neka viša pravda, ali tu ja ne razumijem. Uvijek mi se ?inilo da na ovom svijetu živim izvan pravde. Pravda me se ne ti?e. Pravda je nešto izvan mene i iznad mene. Kako god se uzme, nešto neljudsko. Nikad ne?u sura?ivati s tom odvratnom silom.

To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know hot to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know hot to be dead.

Our dreams prove that to imagine-to dream about things that have not happened-is among mankind's deepest needs.

La verdadera prueba de la moralidad de la humanidad, la más honda (situada a tal profundidad que escapa a nuestra percepción), radica en su relación con aquellos que están a su merced: los animales

There is no perfection, only life

Optimismus je opium lidstva!Zdravý duch páchne blbostí. AÃ…Â¥ žije Trockij! Ludvík

Stvarna dobrota ?ovjeka može se pokazati u svoj svojoj ?isto?i i slobodi samo u odnosu prema nekome tko ne posjeduje nikakvu mo?. Pravi ispit ljudskog morala, onaj osnovni (iskren tako duboko da izmi?e našem pogledu) jest u odnosu ?ovjeka prema onima koji su mu prepušteni na milost i nemilost - prema životinjama. A baš je tu došlo do fundamentalnog debakla ?ovjeka, u toj mjeri elementarnog da su iz njega proizašli svi ostali.