Quotes About Humanity

Three thousand years have not changed the human condition in this respect; we are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, Homer will be read as its truest interpreter.

For of all creatures that breathe and creep about on the earth, there is none so miserable as man.

Miserable mortals who, like leaves, at one moment flame with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly perish

We men are wretched things

Ay, ay, cómo culpan los mortales a los dioses!, pues de nosotros, dicen, proceden los males. Pero también ellos por su estupidez soportan dolores más allá de lo que les corresponde.

Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth

Human beings live for only a short time, and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, 330 all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him. But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.

As the wind scatters leaves upon the earth, such is the race of men

For I have seen the cities of men; and learned their manners.

Tell me about a complicated man.

Nothing is more miserable than man, Of all upon the earth that breathes and creeps.

Take my advice then, and set aside all thoughts of avenging your son. Many a finer and stronger man than he has been killed before now and will be killed hereafter. We can hardly expect to keep our eyes on the pedigree of every man on Earth.

As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another 150  dies. Yet if you wish to learn all this and be certain of my genealogy: there are plenty of men who know it.

Human beings have short lives.330 If we are cruel, everyone will curse us during our life, and mock us when we die. The names of those who act with nobleness are brought by travelers across the world, and many people speak about their goodness.

Beware, Diomedês! Forbear, Diomedês! Do not try to put yourself on a level with the gods; that is too high for a man's ambition. The immortal gods are one race, men that walk upon the earth are another.

At the same time, Europe's long-dead postal service was resumed. Now Erasmus could become a snail-mail junkie, using a stream of letters24 to unite a community of international eccentrics into a movement which downgraded religion's death ride to heaven and exalted earthly humanity. The moment was appropriate. For the first time since the rise of multicellularity, there was no longer just one global brain but two—one microbial, the other that of man- and womankind.

When reporting on epidemic diseases that primarily struck the poor in Upper Silesia in 1848, the famed German pathologist Rudolf Virchow observed: "it is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation, that it forgets the most shameful happenings in the daily shame of events."82 The toleration of horrible situations that affect only the health of others is a phenomenon, sadly, that is still very much with us.

Lo, God! I am Thy handiwork. I have sinned and have done great evil, yet I am still Thy handiwork, who hath made me what I am. So, though I may not undo that which I have done, yet I may, with Thy aid, do better hereafter than I have done heretofore.

However, if Sir Launcelot of the Lake failed now and then in his behavior, who is there in the world shall say, 'I never fell into error'? And if he more than once offended, who is there shall have hardihood to say, 'I never committed offence'?

A] strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: human life is one and all men are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience.

It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings.

Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.