Quotes About Humanity

We're painted savages, nothing more, in spite of what we like to think of as some thousands of years of civilization. Only our present paint's called clothing and our caves called buildings

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and malice, "human" might be the greater insult.

If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.

Pigeons are people too.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: Blind creeds and kings have had their day. Break the dead branches from the path: Our hope is in the aftermath... Make way for Brotherhood—make way for Man.

To err is human To purr feline.

Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men...

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

We are creatures trapped in culture.

I think a civilization is created out of some kind of sublimation of violence. When the violence gets too sublimated, you get a sick civilization.

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

For, on this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.

Behind the wheel is one of the least likely places to have our faith in humanity restored.

Man, bitterly examined, is merely a vehicle for units of nourishing combustion...

Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.

Before God we are relatively all equally wise — equally foolish.

There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it ill behooves any of us To find fault with the rest of us.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike...

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone, and more fragile than a rose.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow-man, without at last finding the other end of it about his own neck.

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 dies.