Quotes About Humanity

it is hard for many people to abandon the concept that human beings are angels imprisoned in earthly shells.

Violence has followed our species every step of the way in its long journey through time.

From the scalped bodies of ancient warriors to the suicide bombers in today's newspaper headlines, history is drenched in human blood.

Human isn't a scientific concept at all. It's a folk-concept that means, roughly, one of us. As Rorty insightfully observes, such people "are morally offended Ã¢â'¬Â¦ by the suggestion that they treat people whom they do not think of as human as if they were human.

Subhumans, it was believed, are beings that lack that special something that makes us human. Because of this deficit, they don't command the respect that we, the truly human beings, are obliged to grant one another. They can be enslaved, tortured, or even exterminated—treated in ways in which we could not bring ourselves to treat those whom we regard as members of our own kind. This phenomenon is called dehumanization.

Science is a tool, and if we were an esentially kind and peaceful species, it would not occur to us to use this tool for destructive purposes.

The more we learn about ourselves and our history, the more we are confronted with our extraordinarily violent character.

the closer we judge a creature is to us on the hierarchy, the more inclined we are to grant it moral standing.

To understand war, we must understand ourselves.

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

No human is without imperfections. Drawing attention to them magnifies their importance, especially if attention is drawn to efforts to conceal or disguise a weak spot.

molecular genetic studies show that there has been an acceleration of human adaptive evolution over the past 40,000 years, and especially during the past 10,000 years

He has many reasons to scorn the bulk of humanity, and feels no shame for it.

This new lot...they too would go down. They were 'troops' who were about to be 'thrown in,' 'men' in some general's larger plan, 're-enforcements ' and would soon be 'casualties'. They were also Spud, Snow, Skeeter, Blue, Tommo.

written without hatred. They are not exploitative attempts to sell soap powder or political candidates; they are parables about the human condition, which, without connection to the divine, is always sin. With thanks to Billy Graham.

After the conflagration, in the final years of humankind, the artists will, once again, be found painting the ceilings of the caves, and the middlemen will, as always, be trying to talk the honest hunters out of their kill. And it may or may not then be remembered, or indeed believed, there was once a time when the two groups were inextricably linked.

We're basically nuts. Human beings, we're basically insane.

Cuál es la utilidad de ser bueno con un pobre? Preguntó Cicerón.

There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The Happy and the Sad are the same population.

Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact, regardless of whether to kiss or to wound, we still must come together.

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

Other people's pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.