Quotes About Humanity

My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

When I was in love there was somebody in the world who was more important than me, and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse.

So I wrote. I wrote as though God thought my voice mattered. I wrote because I believed a human story was beautiful, no matter how small the human was. I wrote because I didn't make myself, God did. And I wrote like he'd invited me to share my true "self" with the world.

I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of alturism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.

the words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language...those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.

alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language... Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.

I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I'm afraid. I'm willing to contradict something I've said before. I'm willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I'm willing to apologize. I'm perfectly willing to be perfectly human.

I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

Jesus had no regard for the lifeboat politics you and I live within every day.

I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human.

I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.

Perhaps if we stop reducing the text to formulas for personal growth, we can read it as stories of imperfect humans having relations with a perfect God and come to understand the obvious message He is communicating to mankind.

They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

El deseo innato de ser generoso. Ninguno de los deseos que he mencionado es malo. También es verdad que todos pueden potencialmente llevarse demasiado lejos, pero el hecho es que estamos diseñados para sobrevivir. Ahora bien, debiera consolarnos saber que la mayoría de los seres humanos tenemos un potencial tremendo para la generosidad.

La verdad es que no estamos únicamente interesados en nuestra propia supervivencia; también nos interesa la supervivencia de los demás, sobre todo de quienes no han tenido las mismas oportunidades que nosotros.

The philosophical problem in a story is about something even larger than the story itself. It's about the question why. Why does this story matter in the overall epic of humanity?

A person could read the Bible, not to become smart, but rather to feel that they are not alone, that somebody understands them and love them enough to speak to them, on purpose, in a way that makes a person feel human.

I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our buildings and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal, that we had eaten dinner with prostitutes, held them in our arms, opened up spare rooms for them, and loved them and learned from them.

And what is sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our televisions, not having to deal with real people who might hurt us or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the Milky Way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all.

I suppose building a healthy family is possible. Maybe what children really need is simple. Maybe they just need somebody to show them it's okay to be human.

I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other?

Now people matter.

It's convenient for us to think that the nasty emotions, hate and anger, can adhere to the lower orders, as if they owned them by right. So that leaves us, not surprisingly, to lay claim to love and joy and all those highsouled things.' He'd tried to protest, but she'd cut him short with a gesture. 'They love, the stupid and the dull and the crude, quite as strongly as we do. They just can't dress their emotions up in pretty words the way we do.

Nieddu's gesture came of the same mysterious, irresistible urge to make things better for other people. For a relative, for a stranger: the urge to make things better was in our marrow.