Quotes About Humanity

Keeping young people away from Shakespeare is like removing a link to their humanness.

An experience that shaped me happened early in my TV career when I filmed in Mozambique, Angola and Bangladesh for 'Blue Peter' and Comic Relief. Places with extreme poverty. When you see that first-hand as a young person, you take it with you for life.

Maybe I'm a damaged man. I think we're all damaged in some ways. When I was younger I never thought I had any way of breaking through the hardships.

I studied ethics more than anything - people's feelings about humanity. Of course, I was much younger then. I had more trust in humanity then, but I think people were more trustful. They had standards of right and wrong. Now people say: 'What's right? What's wrong?' And I say: 'if you don't know what's right or wrong, then I'm sorry for you.'

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Putting forward your positive energy connects you back to basic human values which we all share. Good Deeds Day shows that no matter the size of the gesture, a smile that brightens someone else's day or volunteering in your community, we can all take active part in making a difference.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

We're not just being dramatic talking about a human extinction - that's the pathway we're on. We have to look at the bigger picture. If your child had cancer and it was unlikely they were going to survive, you'd do everything in your power to fight it.

There is nothing remotely dignified about sorting through rotting trash to find something to feed your child, or asking someone for money because you have none (anyone who has contrived to give people money before they had to ask will never forget the look of gratitude in their eyes).

In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible.

Sonder is the realization that every individual passerby has their own life just as vivid and complex as yours.

My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story.

I am literally just a human. I have the same brain as you; there's a skeleton under my skin just like yours.

We are all connected. The pain and suffering of others is yours also, on some level, whether you choose to pay attention or not. The reason we can't achieve total bliss is because you're not here solo.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

If you can't laugh at yourself, then how can you laugh at anybody else? I think people see the human side of you when you do that.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

As our values are the core to who we are as human beings, they are also the easiest way to identify and connect with others in meaningful ways. Think about it - most political campaigns are based around values. Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign galvanized millions of youth behind two very clear values - hope and change.

We've always idealized youth and then destroyed youth. That has happened since the beginning of time, and I'm fascinated by why we do that.

Clowning is a trick to get love close. I can hug 99 percent of people in the first second of contact if I'm in my clown character. The clown assumes your humanity. It assumes that, whatever trauma you've had, you can still love yourself.

Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you've got a character. It's got to feel like people I know and it doesn't just become a bag of tricks.