Quotes About Humanity

on 24 July Marshal Rokossovskii's Army Group had overrun the extermination camp at Majdanek; for the first time the unbelievable had become visible. Photographs of gas chambers and crematoria and living skeletons in the camp had shocked the world.

The striving of humanity for knowledge and truth [can] not be suppressed. The growth of the spirit [is]an essential part of Creation; it was planned like the growth of the body, of the plants and animals and people - every living thing that God had created.

Haven't you sometimes thought that people's vices are often the only things that make them interesting?

In contrast to the modern view that religious doubt is something to reject, fear or merely tolerate, doubt not only can be seen as an inevitable aspect of our humanity but also can be celebrated as a vital part of faith. Doubt has often been disparaged, or merely tolerated, because it is seen as leading to an inert state of undecidability in which nothing can be believed or acted upon. Yet in reality it is only in the midst of undecidability that real decisions can be made.

But the problem is that the fundamental structure of scapegoating is not broken in the acceptance of the latest "other." If the underlying scapegoat mechanism is not decommissioned, then new "others" will always arise to protect the group from its own internal conflicts. For

Regardless of how we might feel about another human being, they are made in God's image and of infinite value and worth.

When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human.

You are a human being made in God's likeness.

Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?

the result of denying and minimizing our wounds over many years is that we become less and less human, empty Christian shells with painted smiley faces.

The Deuteronomy reason for Sabbath-keeping is that our ancestors in Egypt went for four hundred years without a vacation (Deuteronomy 5:15). Never a day off. The consequence: they were no longer considered persons but slaves. Hands. Work units. Not persons created in the image of God but equipment for making brick and building pyramids. Humanity was defaced. — Eugene Peterson

To feel is to be human. To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of God. To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves well. Why? Because our feelings are a component of what it means to be made in the image of God. To cut them out of our spirituality is to slice off an essential part of our humanity.

One of our greatest obstacles in knowing God is our own lack of self-knowledge. So we end up wearing a mask—before God, ourselves, and other people. And we can't become self-aware if we cut off our humanity out of fear of our feelings. This fear leads to unwillingness to know ourselves as we truly are and stunts our growth in Christ.

To feel is to be human. To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of God. To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves well.

Sadly, some of our misguided Christian beliefs and expectations have, as Thomas Merton wrote, "merely deadened our humanity, instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.

Azt mondják, Isten nem csúfoltatik meg. Én meg azt mondom, ne csúfoltassék meg az ember!

God was singing through this little man to all the world.

The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.

To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.

The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.

Of a techno-human culture that wants to be more than a successful barbarism, two things above all are required: psychological cultural formation and the cultural capacity for translation. Mathematicians must become poets, cyberneticists must become philosophers of religion, doctors must become composers, computer scientists must become shamans. Was humanity ever something other than the art of managing transitions?

The human being does not hop out of the magician's hat in the way that the ape climbs down from the tree; he also does not emerge from the hand of a creator who surveys everything in advance with his foreknowledge. He is the product of a production that is not itself a human being. The human being was not yet what he would become before he became it.

Talvez, por menos oportuno que possa parecer, se devesse dizer mais uma vez: no mundo que sucedeu à graça, a arte foi o asilo das exceções que restaram.

Din marele elan al transform?rii egalitariste a umanit??ii nu a r?mas, pân? la urm?, mult mai mult decât autoprivilegierea nedisimulat? a funcÈ›ionarilor – ca s? nu mai vorbim de paralizia, resemnarea È™i cinismul pe care le-a l?sat moÈ™tenire.