Quotes About Humanity

No one is intrinsically superior or inferior — we are all just going through phases.

What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history. If there are no rational beings elsewhere, it may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it, because the existence of the Universe will have been on the whole good.

is the same voices that, in the slave ship, smile at their brothers, "Boy, is just the whip

We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.

What about evil, you may ask? Aren't some people just evil, just monsters, and aren't such people just unforgivable? I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil. To relegate someone to the level of monster is to deny that person's ability to change and to take away that person's accountability for his or her actions and behavior.

We are always at our best when compassion enables us to recognize the unique pressures and singular stories of the people on the other side of our conflicts.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

To treat anyone as if they were less than human, less than a brother or a sister, no matter what they have done, is to contravene the very laws of our humanity.

Cultivate your forgiveness with your friends, with your family, with strangers, and with yourself. Remind yourself that every person you encounter carries a sorrow and a struggle. Recognize that we all share a fundamental humanity. Model the

A person is a person because s/he recognizes others as persons.

True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.

The way to understand any enemy is to realize that, from his perspective, he is not a villain but a hero.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white.

People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition.

It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit.

All modern humans are related to what scientists call Mitochondrial Eve. This refers to our common matrilineal ancestor. She lived approximately 200,000 years ago and depending on how you estimate the length of a generation, we are only 5,000 to 10,000 generations from one another. To put it another way, each of us is a cousin of one another at most 10,000 times removed. And yes, Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa, so, in a very real way, we are all Africans.

Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them. When uhuru, or freedom and independence

None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are.

The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another. Each time we help, and each time we harm, we have a dramatic impact on our world.

as we say in our African idiom, a person is a person through other persons. To dehumanize another inexorably means that one is dehumanized as well.

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All