Quotes About Humanity

But it also happens at times that dreams genuinely tell us something about other people. In this way, the unconscious plays a role that is far from being fully understood. Like all the higher forms of life, man is in tune with the living beings around him to a remarkable degree. He perceives their sufferings and problems, their positive and negative attributes and values, instinctively-quite independently of his conscious thoughts about other people.

In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

If ignorance alone, according to Gnostic orthodoxy, keeps humans tied to the material world, knowledge frees them from it. Because humans are ignorant, that knowledge must come from outside them. Because the powers of the material world are ignorant, too, that knowledge must come from beyond them as well: it can come only from the godhead. The dependence of humanity on the godhead matches the dependence of the ego on the unconscious to reveal itself.

Psihologia individului corespunde îns? psihologiei naÈ›iunilor. Ceea ce fac naÈ›iunile face È™i individul È™i, atâta timp cât face individul, face È™i naÈ›iunea. Doar schimbarea atitudinii individului este începutul schimb?rii psihologiei naÈ›iunii. Marile probleme ale omenirii nu au fost niciodat? rezolvate prin legi generale, ci întotdeauna doar prin reînnoirea atitudinii individului.

We push one another into vice. And how can a man be recalled to salvation, when he has none to restrain him, and all mankind to urge him on? …

Civilized man ... is in danger of losing all contact with the world of instinct- a danger that is still further increased by his living an urban existence in what seems to be a purely man-made environment. This loss of instinct is largely responsible for the pathological condition of contemporary culture.

Should we will error? You should not, but you do will that error which you take for the best truth, as men have always done.

The development of consciousness is the burden, the suffering, and the blessing of mankind.

From then on, my life belonged to the generality.

El Occidente cristiano considera que el hombre depende por entero de la gracia divina o, por lo menos, de la Iglesia, único instrumento terrenal de la redención sancionado por Dios. Oriente, por el contrario, insiste una y otra vez en afirmar que el ser humano es el único responsable de su evolución espiritual. Oriente, en efecto, cree que es posible redimirse a sí mismo.

The general undervaluation of the human soul is so great that neither the great religions nor the philosophies nor scientific rationalism have been willing to look at it twice.

It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of the individuals in need of redemption.

there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

If we seek genuine psychological understanding of the human being of our own time, we must know his spiritual history absolutely. We cannot reduce him to mere biological data, since he is not by nature merely biological but is a product also of spiritual presuppositions.

Humanity is arming itself, in dread and fascinated horror, for a stupendous crime.

In our Western civilization the Cosmic Man has been identified to a great extent with Christ, and in the East with Krishna or with Buddha. In the Old Testament this same symbolic figure turns up as the "Son of Man" and in later Jewish mysticism is called Adam Kadmon. Certain religious movements of late antiquity simply called him Anthropos (the Greek word for man). Like all symbols this image points to an unknowable secret—to the ultimate unknown meaning of human existence.

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.

Children were not pets, not furniture, not items put on earth to bring pleasure to people who owned them, she raged to herself.

I've come to realize something that for three weeks in my life I'd begun to doubt: There are good people in the world. Good people, kind people. xxx They all could have chosen to be cold, cruel, indifferent. That would have been easy. Brutality, I think, comes naturally to human beings. But they chose to be good, even if what they did could be questioned within the strict confines of the law.

We humans have such a high opinion of ourselves—especially my old brethren in the movement. We think we're gods on earth, that by merely changing our behavior or, more important, changing the behavior of the heathen industrialists and capitalists, that we can actually affect the outcome of the planet. We're so unbelievably arrogant and elite, so blind, so stupid. We think we can control the world. It's so tremendously silly I laugh when I think about it.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. —WILLIAM RALPH INGE, OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS, 1922

Once I did believe the world could be perfected. I don't think that any more. But I believe I've defended the bad side against the worst.

The truth is, not one of is innocent. We all have sins to confess.

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.