Quotes About Humanity

We modern-day humans tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggeration re often catastrophic. Between war, slavery, imperialism and sheer day-to-day racist oppression, the last several centuries have seen so much human suffering justified by minor differences in human appearance that we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are. By any biologically meaningful standard, living humans are barely distinguishable.

Up in our country we are human!" said the hunter. "And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.

war, greed, exploitation, systematic indifference to others' suffering. Were we always like that, or did something, at some point, go terribly wrong?

This is why I developed the concept of human economies: ones in which what is considered really important about human beings is the fact that they are each a unique nexus of relations with others—therefore, that no one could ever be considered exactly equivalent to anything or anyone else.

We modern-day humans tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggeration are often catastrophic. Between war, slavery, imperialism and sheer day-to-day racist oppression, the last several centuries have seen so much human suffering justified by minor differences in human appearance that we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are.

being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations

We already know how this one goes. Humans were once living a 'fairly comfortable life', subsisting from the blessings of Nature, but then we made our most fatal mistake. Lured by the prospect of a still easier life - of surplus and luxury, or living like gods - we had to go and tamper with hat harmonious State of Nature, and thus unwittingly turned ourselves into slaves.

Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wendat believe ought to define humanity – wisdom, reason, equity, etc. – and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interests knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason.

If it is possible to have monarchs, aristocracies, slavery and extreme forms of patriarchal domination, even without a state (as it evidently was); and if it's equally possible to maintain complex irrigation systems, or develop science and abstract philosophy without a state (as it also appears to be), then what do we actually learn about human history by establishing that one political entity is what we would like to describe as a 'state' and another isn't?

A man, being born, is a debt; by his own self he is born to Death

Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.

We are projects of collective self-creation. What if we approached human history that way? What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such? What if, instead of telling a story about how our species fell from some idyllic state of equality, we ask how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles that we can no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. -John Bunyan

It's not how much we give but how much we put into giving. -Mother Teresa

But God – I mean, even if there is a God – reaching out to him… Who would know where to start?" "You don't have to start," he answered. "God has already started. He is already reaching out to you. That's why he became a person.

The violence that Jesus endured only makes sense if you understand that here was God taking upon himself the punishment for the sins of humanity. He would do anything to be reconnected with those he loves – even die for them.

DNA analyses of modern people suggest that the human population declined dramatically, to perhaps only a few hundred. When we talk about all men and women being brothers and sisters, and people of all types being closely related, we are not just being poetic and romantic. Compared to other species, humans exhibit very little genetic diversity, a trait that stems back to that time, not too long ago, when a small band of survivors had to repopulate humanity. We

We are already behaving differently from that bacterial colony in a petri dish, deviating from the fatal S-curve, using our limited but growing global cognitive capacities to anticipate and soften or avoid the crash. We are waking up, and we can see the trends starting to turn. We are slowly rounding the corner on the related problems of poverty and overpopulation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,

Remember that every person only lives for a short time, and you have to make that time pleasant for him.

Hoe zei jij dat ook alweer, over de wrede keuze: de woordeloosheid levend en levendig houden, of onder woorden brengen.

Amore è il fatto che tu sei per me il coltello con cui frugo dentro me stesso". -------- Non si può guarire solo con le parole. Ammalarsi sì. Probabilmente non è molto difficile. Ma consolare? Far riviere? Per questo occorre vedere degli occhi di fonte a sè, toccare delle labbra, delle mani, un corpo che si ribella e strepita contro le tue idee infantili di astrattezza "pura". Cosa c'è di puro? Cosa c'è di puro in me ora?

Vorrei che tu potessi ricordare come ci si sente quando si è donna, e come ci si sente quando non si è né uomo né donna. Solo "essere", prima di tutto, prima delle definizioni, dei pronomi personali, delle parole e dei generi. Forse, in questo modo, potresti anche arrivare, quasi per caso, alla possibilità primordiale di essere me

voglio che tu sappia tutto di me, voglio che tu mi conosca nella mia nudità, nei miei piccoli calcoli e nelle mie ansie meschine, nella mia stupidità, nelle mie vergogne e nella mia infamia.