Quotes About Humanity

That is one curse we all share -- the will to live.

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.

He's new to responsibility, Captain. You'll have to teach him." Teach him what? How to live beneath the burden of command? That's something I can't manage myself. I need only look into Whiskeyjack's face to understand that no one can - no-one who has a heart, anyway. We learn to achieve but one thing: the ability to hide our thoughts, to mask our feelings, to bury our humanity deep in our souls. And that can't be taught, only shown.

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.

We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. She wondered if the gift of revelation—of discovering the meaning underlying humanity—offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility.

Is civilization

kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keep us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those

Imperfect. We can never match the ideals set before us. That is the burden of mortality.

Of course there had been no such crimes. And the blood, which they had shed so profusely, had yielded no evidence of its taint, for neither the name of a people nor the hue of their skin, nor indeed the cast of their features, could make life's blood any less pure, or precious.

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.

I sometimes think we only invented war when we ran out of animals to kill.

Corporate globalism is now the dominant power in your civilization," Adam said. "Once corporations won the right to be treated as if they were people, the common citizen was disenfranchised, because the law then became the official control system for corporate interests over human interests, and corporations treat citizens as units of economy, thus stripping them of their essential humanity. There's nothing more inhuman than a corporation and its interests.

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.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T'lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.

War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. 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.

She felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. Afterward she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn't being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It's a rare gift to under stand that you life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever.

This is how....life happens. One small thing at a time. A series of inconsequential junctions, any or none of which can lead to salvation or disaster. There are no grand moments where a person does or does not perform the act that defines their humanity. There are only moments that appear, briefly, to be this way.

He's been asleep since the war began. He knows this now. In defending himself from death he lost his grip on life. He thinks of Emina, risking her life to deliver expired pills to someone she's never met. Of the young man who ran into the street to save her when she was shot. Of the cellist who plays for those killed in a mortar attack. He could run now, but he doesn't.

This is how she now believes life happens. One small thing at a time. A series of inconsequential junctions, any or none of which can lead to salvation or disaster. There are no grand moments where a person does or does not perform the act that defines their humanity. There are only moments that appear, briefly, to be this way.

He thinks of Mrs. Ristovski. He doesn't know what made her the way she is, but something has killed her, he can see now that she is a ghost as well. She has been a ghost for a long time. And to be a ghost while you're still alive is the worst thing he can imagine.

Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

But exaltation of humanity in no way justifies unchecked devotion at the expense of others who inhabit our world and perhaps worlds beyond.

A]n increasing number of people around the world are seeing their place for the first time within this naturalistic worldview. This recognition represents for humanity a return to the cosmos, a more sophisticated integration of culture and cosmos that humans possessed when cultures began, ranging from Stonehenge and the ancient civilizations such as Sumer and Egypt to Native Americans and the Australian aborigines.