Quotes About Humanity

We only have what we give.

We are, all of us, poor wretches, and those who prefer not to understand this are even worse off than the rest of us.

Art is not necessary at all. All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love --to love as Christ loved, as Buddha loved.

I see only the ideal. But no ideals have ever been fully successful on this earth.

he makes a vast contrast between nature, which is this elemental, capricious, perhaps causal, perhaps chance-directed entity, and man, who has morality, who distinguishes between desire and will, duty and interest, the right and the wrong, and acts accordingly, if need be against nature.

To preserve our absolute categories or ideals at the expense of human lives offends equally against the principles of science and of history; it is an attitude found in equal measure on the right and left wings in our days, and is not reconcilable with the principles accepted by those who respect the facts.

Immanuel Kant, un uomo lontanissimo dall'irrazionalismo, osservò una volta che "dal legno storto dell'umanità non si è mai cavata una cosa diritta". È questo il motivo per cui nessuna soluzione perfetta è possibile nelle cose umane - non già soltanto in pratica, ma in linea di principio - e ogni serio tentativo di metterla in atto è destinato con ogni probabilità a produrre sofferenza, delusione e fallimento.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing completely straight was ever made

I can see how, with enough false education, enough widespread illusion and error, men can, while remaining men, believe this and commit the most unspeakable crimes.

You don't need to put someone under for a blood transfusion! [pauses, realizes] It's more than that, isn't it?

Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?

Strength without compassion is soulless and cruel. Weakness, too, has its place, for it brings understanding.

Had not the jutting bones of the world survived a thousand aeons of human life? Could anything I or any human do really matter in the face of that? [Chapter 35, page 510]

They feared one another because they knew what they were capable of doing, and maybe in some cases, had done. The more weapons they created, the more frightened they would have been of the weapons they imagined their enemies had created, and so they strove to make worse weapons, to discourage any attack. I don't think any of them imagined anyone would dare to use them and yet what other end could there be to it all?' 'They

So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.

Where there are humans you'll find flies, and Buddhas.

Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experiences deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.

One's life, from the beginning, is lonely and desolate; After death, you are inactive of your own. Look quietly at the world of men- Whether they flourish or fade, it's all one grave

Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. (Terence sent me this quote the other day. A good battle cry, I believe... and one I wholeheartedly respect.)

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes — as it is already to a large extent — no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a "free-range" warren but a "battery" one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed.

Contemplating the stars he has become accustomed to considering himself an anonymous and incorporeal dot, almost forgetting that he exists; to deal now with human beings, he cannot help involving himself, and he no longer knows where his self is to be found.

For the man who thought he was Man there is no salvation.

L'umano arriva dove arriva l'amore, non ha confini se non quelli che gli diamo.

And I see the houses of the human race perched on the edge of the sea, shipwrecked in their false neighborliness.