Quotes About Humanity

Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different.

Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure...

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

I like that kind of thing. I like warmth and uncalled-for kindness, the small unnoticed generosities that speckle the meanness of the world.

perhaps all the trouble in the world has, at its root, our insistence on denying others their full humanity.

in the midst of suffering, it was important to remember one thing: everyone suffered. Some more, some less; some now, some later; some in one way, some in another. But no one was exempt. It was, he said, a lesson, not a punishment. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Some women were given children; others were not. Some women had parents

If I look at you"—he pointed to a very old woman who seemed to be teetering in her chair on the far left-hand end of the first row—"and I see not woman, not person, but piece of the energy of God, the same energy that is inside me, how can I hurt you? How can I able to think bad on you? No. You see?" The

I have tried, I still try, to do what I can to ease the suffering on this earth, and I'm sure you do the same. The rest of it we have to allow to be, as painful as that is for us. We have to care for ourselves and our loved ones. We have to serve others to the extent we are able. And the rest of it we have to allow to be. It is awful, is it not, the human predicament? Awful and beautiful.

The frown again. So much contained there in the flex of a few muscles. All of history, it sometimes seemed to me. All of ours, at least.

So it seems that the core of the enlightenment, as declared by Immanuel Kant, is still the basis for education: Enlightenment is humanity's emergence from her self-imposed immaturity. (Kant, 1784) A democracy (and the self-determination of the people in a community) can only function if the people involved in this process have the skills and competencies to act maturely in the spirit of Kant.

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings." (p. 16-17)

Finding the center of strenghth within ourselves is in the long run best contribution we can do to our fellow man

One does not become fully human painlessly

On the contrary, as Miller also notes, "Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and . . . its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal." For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously man's freedom and his need to realize himself; it demonstrates our belief in the "indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

Anxiety is not an affect among other affects, such as pleasure or sadness. It is rather an ontological characteristic of man, rooted in his very existence as such.

Compassion gives us fresh perspective on what it means to be human, and helps us judge less harshly ourselves as well as the persons who impinge upon us.

Sisyphus,' is an interpretation of the unavoidable limits to which everyone who is human is condemned. The constructive way of dealing with anxiety in this sense consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a 'teacher,' to borrow Kirkegaard's phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny.

But in another respect man is very different from the rest of nature. He possesses consciousness of himself; his sense of personal identity distinguishes him from the rest of the living or nonliving things. And nature cares not a fig for man's personal

I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.

Still, at its heart the Rwandan story is the story of the failure of humanity to heed a call for help from an endangered people. The international community, of which the UN is only a symbol, failed to move beyond self-interest for the sake of Rwanda. While most nations agreed that something should be done they all had an excuses why they should not be the ones to do it. As a result, the UN was denied the political will and material mean to prevent the tragedy.

Still, I did not regret for a moment leaving the bright lights of Manhattan behind in favour of night skies so dark the stars seemed close enough to be street lights. In the recycled cabin air of the long flight back, I physically longed for Rwanda, its rich red earth, the smell of its wood fires and its vibrant humanity.

The people of Rwanda were not an insignificant black mass living in abject poverty in a place of no consequence. They were individuals like myself, like my family, with every right and expectation of any human who is a member of our tortured race. I was determined to persevere.

Humore is an affirmation of man's dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

I see History as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in his tracks, must carry one stage further the challenge of being a man.