Quotes About Humanity

No men really know about other human beings. The best you can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails.

This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.

When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out it discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.

You can't hate men if you know them.

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I'm jus' pain covered with skin.

Yes, I can understand that. It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don't know and don't hate." "Maybe that makes it easier," said Louis. "You have a point, Louis. But some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.

We are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins.

Tom Joad lays it out: ... A fella ain't got a soul of his own - just a little piece of a big soul. The one big soul that belongs to everybody …

And the great owners, who had become through the might of their holdings both more and less than men

But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.

A war comes always to someone else...The war, at first anyway, was for other people...And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also true that someone else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn't true either...

Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of another?

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.

It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world.

I believe that there is only one story in the world... Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hunger and ambitions in their avarice and cruelty and in their kindness and generosity too-- in a net of good and evil. A man after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or ill?

sorrow is the mother of a general compassion

If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.

She started for the door, and when she reached it, she turned about. I'm learnin' one thing good, she said. Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.

Si uno tiene un tiro de caballos no pone el grito en el cielo si los tiene que alimentar cuando no están trabajando. Pero si uno tiene hombres trabajando para él, le importa un comino. Los caballos valen mucho más que los hombres.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.

Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.

Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live- for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live- for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept...