Quotes About Humanity

So I did, my young lover. We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

Look not to our unknown benefactor for salvation. This is humanity's war upon itself and the only salvation possible must be found in the eyes of our brother, our sister, our neighbor. Do find the courage, my beloved friend, to meet that gaze.

Our education system no longer teaches empathy,' Sam said. 'Now, if everybody in college had to take a minor in Literature, the world would be a better place.

Anomander sighed, and then said, 'Sympathy is not a weakness, Ivis. To grieve for the loss of innocence is to remind yourself that yours is not the only life in this world.

We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured...Until the outside is inflicted on the inside, then the brutal war begins. We are not born to compassion either - large wide eyes and sweet demeanor notwithstanding.

The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance. He

How many great compassions arose from a dark source? A private place of secret failings?

They didn't shelter their own, didn't feed their own, didn't heal their own, and yet, in the midst of all this inhumanity, they held themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization.

Some things went beyond a single man's life, and maybe justice existed outside the minds of humanity, beyond even the hungry eyes of gods and goddesses, a thing shining and pure and final.

Expectation is the hoary curse of humanity.

They'll die for you now. I know, you don't do it on purpose. There's nothing calculated when you're being human, old friend. That's what makes you so deadly.

Expectation is the hoary curse of humanity. One can listen to words, and see them as the unfolding of a petal or, indeed, the very opposite: each word bent and pushed tighter, smaller, until the very packet of meaning vanishes with a flip of deft fingers. Poets and tellers of tales can be tugged by either current, into the riotous conflagration of beauteous language or the pithy reduction of the tersely colourless.

It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain. To even consider such a thing demands a profound dispensation, a willingness to wear someone else's chains, to taste their suffering, to see with one's own eyes the hue cast on all things – the terrible stain that is despair.

That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work's done.

Among humans, cold indifference was often manifested in acts of brutal cruelty, was often the true visage of evil

We are all naught but twists of suffering in a river of pain.

Dimness of thought and lack of introspection made many humans less than human, surrendering their precious gifts to a headlong plunge forward, always forward. He'd had his own benighted years, when he would proclaim that he lived only for the present. He had willed himself stupid, because it was an easy thing to do.

Will you accept that suffering defies boundaries and that pain carves no line in the sand?

War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life. Servants of Hood, one and all.

Not all things about oneself were likeable. So she had wept for her flaws, for her weaknesses and for her humanity. Before two witnesses who no doubt had their own stories, their own reasons to grieve.

Do you find the need to answer all this, Historian?" he asked. "All those tomes you've read, those other thoughts from other men, other women. Other times. How does a mortal make answer to what his or her kind are capable of? Does each of us, soldier or no, reach a point when all that we've seen, survived, changes us inside? Irrevocably changes us. What do we become, then? Less human, or more human? Human enough, or too human?

And what is that true sense? Why, it is the insanity of belief. And now you make us believe. With you. In you. And in your madness, which you so insist upon sharing. You taste bitter, human. You taste of your world.

Children are dying.' Lull nodded. 'That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work's done.

What makes a better human being? Is it just a question of faster, stronger, smarter? But smarter in what way? Computationally? This idea of augmenting our species through technology, adding new RAM to the old hard-drive as it were, seems to miss the point. And that is that we can be better right now, without technology. Augmentation is pointless if we keep repeating the same old mistakes. And efficiency is not the same as better, not even close. You want to be a better human being? Start today.