Quotes About Humanity

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.

We have been slow to recognize the degree to which religious faith perpetuates man's inhumanity to man.

Values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures

Well, let's make it simpler. Let's say we found a culture on an island somewhere that was removing the eyeballs of every third child. Would you then agree that we had found a culture that was not perfectly maximizing human well-being?

And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest.

He goes so far as to suggest that we were secretly hoping that such devastation would be visited upon us:

The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.

All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

Religious unreason should acquire and even greater stigma in our discourse, given that it remains among the principal causes of armed conflict in our world. Before you can get to the end of this paragraph, another person will probably die because of what someone else believes about God. Perhaps it is time we demanded that our fellow human beings had better reasons for maintaining their religious differences, if such reasons even exist

By contrast, the most monstrous crimes against humanity have invariably been inspired by unjustified belief.

We are spawn of woodland apes. No code has been undone. Neither faith nor reason will deliver us. We must look to the trees.

was only God's rough draft, but Eve was his masterpiece.

If not for the deer, the men would have shot each other for sport.

We must love all human beings, giving even our last drop of blood for all our siblings of this great human family.

Wherever a ray of solar light can reach, man can reach.

When Taimour was hit by a bullet in the left shoulder, he began to stagger toward the man who shot him, reaching out with his hands. He remembered the look in the soldier's eyes. 'He was about to cry,' Taimour said three years later.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.

I have found the world kinder than I expected, but less just.

God himself, sir, doesn't propose to judge man until the end of his days. (So why should you and I? ~ this latter part is added by Napoleon Hill)

How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cuse or cure!

If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies