Quotes About Humanity

her fellow passengers: "My

And wherever you go on the face of the earth have the humility to think that a thousand years ago someone pretty much like you stood there and a thousand years from now a boy like you will be there. And in two thousand years boys and places and people will have been pretty much the same.

He was reminded that men may be angels, but they are animals, too. They are driven by uncontrollable forces and only the love of other people makes it possible for them to survive. Men are lonely and are stricken in the night. They lock their jaws against themselves. They scream like animals, and even though they ridicule love and the forces of destruction, they are themselves theatres for the operation of such forces.

Because I am for them, Commander, because their ancestors stood up to that Nazi, Bligh, just like I would be for one little Jew, terrified and hungry, crossing the Pyrenees to get away to freedom from the Gestapo. One little Jew. You wouldn't have him in your house. He stinks, he has lice. But, you know what, Commander? I am for him, every time." And he would punch me in the shoulder and lug his M-1 up onto the ridge, night after night.

We are mankind because we survive. We do it in a half-assed way, but we do it.

this world contains an irreducible minority of sick sons of bitches, and sooner or later one of them is going to impinge on your life, and mine.

But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God's universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, laboring humanity would perish.

All true genius is impersonal. It belongs not to the man through whom it is manifested; it belongs to all. It is a diffusion of pure Truth: the Light of Heaven descending on all mankind.

Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion. id tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt; only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.

Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt; only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.

The unselfish man, even though he finds himself involved in riches, stands aloof, in his mind, from the idea of "exclusive possession", and so escapes the bitterness and fear and anxiety which ever accompany the covetous spirit. He does not regard any of his outward accretions as being too valuable to lose, but he regards the virtue of unselfishness as being too valuable to the world - to suffering humanity - to lose or cast away.

Anger is a form of dishonesty. Nobody is perfect. It's a lie to expect the people around you to be perfect.

there is always something new to learn in this surreal art of being human.

Humans are great storytellers. That's what separates us from every other species.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important.

I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter.

It's astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body - the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too. You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.