Quotes About Humanity

If only such sad people could remember: Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is still sweet. Let it go on.

His name is Human,' said the Speaker. 'And so is yours,' said the Bishop softly.

I suspect that this is the true tragedy of the human condition. The more closely we're involved with other people, the more isolated and misunderstood we feel. Because nobody can possible know us, and we can't possible know anybody, not even ourselves. Wakers, p 427/566

Science fiction is not about the future. Like all other fiction, it is about the present. It simply uses different techniques to show us who we are, who we might be, and whom we ought to become.

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.

As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive.

He wasn't preoccupied, he was unoccupied. He had detached himself from the world. And her job was to reconnect him. To bring him back and show him his place in the web of humanity.

They were trying to get human beings to define themselves as all belonging to one tribe. It had happened briefly when they were threatened by creatures who truly were strangers; then the human race had felt itself to be one people, and united in order to repel an enemy. And the moment victory was achieved, it all fell apart, and long-

How do you know there wasn't something that he touched kindly? Someone who loved him, who was blessed by his love? Destroyed everything he touched – that's a lie that can't truthfully be said of any human being who ever lived.

He was scum, and so it was all right that they treated him like scum.' 'And you think he wasn't?' 'No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him...

The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

It's a tragedy that we need to continually prove that we are human beings.

Het was krankzinnig hoe klein de wereld in wezen was.

Survival, in fact, is about the connection between things. [Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism]

After Schächter's final performance, Eichmann is reported to have said: Those crazy Jews, singing their own requiem.