Quotes About Humanity

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

When man began to think he was a separate person with a separate soul, it created a violent situation.

The world is not violent. But there is a lot of violence in it.

We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it's against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don't talk about them, or we don't talk about them as much.

The rise of ISIS has exposed the darkest side of humanity - at times manifesting their violent ideology at our very doorsteps.

As a photographer who is constantly in violent, bloody situations where the instinct is to turn away, I am always trying to figure out how to make people not turn away.

We're such a funky species. We're so violent, so greedy - this is how we roll. But what are we going to do about it? How do we move forward given who we are? Because situations don't come out of nothing. They come out of certain conditions.

One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.

Men view life to be as precious as women do, and to say that men have a more violent nature is insulting to men.

I'm not any more sexist, racist or violent than the world around me.

I think you could make a completely Virtual Centre, though I have a general feeling, and maybe because I am getting very old, that you still need face to face.

I'm convinced that the main reason we've become so obsessed with restaurants is due to our basic need to get out of virtual space and into a real one. We're not going out to eat merely to share food; we're there to sit at the same table together, slow down, breathe the same air.

It connects humans to other humans in a profound way that I've never seen before in any other form of media. And it can change people's perception of each other. And that's how I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world.

All you have to be is kind. That's all you need. Once you've got that, it virtually rules out everything else.

I think it is tragic that a situation should arise where civilians on any side are killed. But it is almost a cliche to say that it is virtually unavoidable and this isn't unique to us alone.

If we don't accept the uncomfortable proposition that every perpetrator of virtually every act of evil in our history has been a human being like us, then we actually foreclose the possibility of understanding how we do this to one another and therefore make it impossible to figure out how we might prevent these things.

It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

It is a natural virtue incident to our sex to be pitiful of those that are afflicted.

No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.

In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam's central virtue - the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.