Quotes About Humanity

If you punish somebody harshly, she said, then you are simply inflicting more pain on the world. You are also punishing not only that person, but his family and the people who love him. You are punishing yourself, really, because we are all brothers and sisters in this world, whether we know it or not; we are all citizens of the same village.

We were all people—men and women—and you could never say that one group of people was less important than another.

She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were not to be despised or hated, but were to be pitied. So

If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.

People don't talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary

We are all human, she would say. Men particularly. You must not be ashamed.

If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others.

Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting--even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert.

When somebody does wrong, Emma, we must remember that that person is still a human being like the rest of us. We must not rush to throw the first stone. We must remind ourselves that all of us do wrong from time to time, unless we're saints, which we aren't.

Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.

It's easy to be foolish... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and when you know, too, that it's just going to make you unhappy.

but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint. Her

Eating with others was different from just talking to them—it was an act of commitment, a recognition of shared humanity. We all share these physical needs, it said; we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability.

There are many more kind people than not-so-kind people," said Mma Ramotswe.

of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of intimacy that is a feature of hotels – strangers under one roof, no more. Well, we should not be strangers to one another. We

You can only wear one pair of shoes at a time," she said. "Rich people are like the rest of us—two feet, ten toes. We are all the same that way.

Reflections on human smallness have often prompted me to think that. What do divisions between people matter? What does it matter if somebody is English or Scottish or whatever?

the world was a vale of tears—it always had been.

but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint.

wrong to think the less of another for what he or she was. There was no moral obligation to like others, nor necessarily to enthuse over them, but we did have to recognize their equal worth.

There were so many lives, she thought, that could only be led with difficulty, with pain, and because we were so bound up in our own lives, so many of these were invisible to us until suddenly we saw, and knew, and felt that sudden pang of human sympathy that comes with knowing.

Sometimes wickedness prevails.

Nihil humanum mihi alienum est

Love and compassion are the only balm