Quotes About Humanity

Life's easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared. The thing is, you can't do that without becoming them, just a little. Sure

We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.

There's power in the touch of another person's hand....Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone's hand can ease pain and make things better. That's power. That's power so fundamental that most people never even realize it exists.

You'd think we would hold life in greater value than we do.

We're always disappointed when we find out someone has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down.

What do we have left?" "Persons," I said quietly. "I don't understand," Susan said. "As a whole, people suck," I replied. "But a person can be extraordinary.

Body or mind, heart or soul, we're all human, and we're supposed to feel pain. You cut yourself off from it at your own risk.

I'm not saying pain is what defines us as human beings. But it is, in many ways, what unites us. We all recognize other people in pain.

They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed. If the terrorists had hoped their attacks would reveal the weaknesses in western society, the events in Gander proved its strength.

There was no hatred. No anger. No fear in Gander. Only the spirit of community. Here, everyone was equal, everyone was treated the same. Here, the basic humanity of man wasn't just surviving but thriving

They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed.

Tears are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of compassion.

I finally understood that death and numbers don't cohere. Everyone is 'one.' An accident report might say that nine died, four of them in their teens, but each death was 'one.' Each of six million Jews was 'one.' With death it is a series of 'ones.

language was a convenience of the heart, not something to bludgeon people with.

However grim the world, we are what we have evolved into.

There are no true monsters, only some people [...] who with regularity acted like a monster. It's still episodic. [...] It never works when you leave out even a small part of the picture.

Oh sons and daughters of man, under the vast and starry night though the stars are invisible, what are you doing here while your histories moment by moment trail off behind you like auto exhaust

damn the world and its wars, she thought. Those who start the wars never die in them. She packed hastily, had supper with Winnie

Peoples is peoples. -Pete-

If evil in this world is deeply human and very real, and religious people believe it is, it just doesn't make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies "out there" with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is "in here" with us—embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.

The religious conviction that challenges us to see the image of God in every person is an absolute barrier to the practice of torture.

This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.

He noted that Christ himself, although the Son of God, was always gentle with those who were poor or weak. He went on to say that he tried to follow a simple rule: "You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.