Quotes About Humanity

I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man.

Labour is not a commodity.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine qua non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, "what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?" And sometimes we use religion just to back up these unworthy hatreds, because we're frightened too.

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it.

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22)

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

Historically the delusional conclusion that the diversity of forms in which humankind is created means that some bear God's likeness more than others has led to hatred and violence. Through such alienation from one another, the rest of creation, and God, we humans have failed to realize our full humanity.

Love is the mortar that holds the human structure together.

Especially when it comes to animals used for food, humanity's reasoning power and concern about fairness plummets.

The chicken industry tells the public that economic profitability cannot be achieved without careful attention to the welfare of the chicken, but this is not how the system actually works. Chickens can be profoundly mistreated and still "produce," just as profoundly mistreated humans can be overweight, sexually active, and able to produce offspring. Like humans, chickens can "adapt," up to a point, to living in slum conditions. Is this an argument for slums?

There's so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us, to talk about the rest of us.

Just because a person has money in his pocket it doesn't mean he has kindness in his heart.

I am more human than rational.

He looked around, saw himself mirrored in that man walking back with his rifle. And suddenly, it seemed possible to him that we might love ourselves the most when we are suffering and seen to suffer. The pursuits of men seemed only the more shocking, if this were true.

Our stories are all we have. The only thing that can save us is to learn each other's stories. From beginning to end....For every life we know, we are expanded.

Ideas will not save us, he thought. Not right or wrong not peace or retribution. Our stories are all we have. The only thing that can ever save us is to learn each other's stories. From beginning to end.

I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.

I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one spending my life making the same mistake over and over again or if that's simply human. Do we all tend toward a single besetting sin?

I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.

Mortals are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but pain and misery, yet they will throw away their lives for a word, an idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement.