Quotes About Humanity

The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

Face your embarrassment at being human, and you'll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion. It's a great power, your Open Secret. When your heart is undefended, you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door.

The basic belief of feminism is not that women are right and men are wrong; It is merely that women are people and therefor their voices matter, their values matter and their stories matter. It's time for women to tell their versions of what it means to be fully human. It is time for men to respect those insights and it is time for all of us to integrate them into a new story of power.

How can it be when we're all safeguarding the very same story? That's why Rumi calls it an Open Secret.

where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

In the end, what will matter is how much we loved—our children, our mates, our families, our friends, everyone we knew, everyone who traveled with us during our brief visit to this unbearably lovely place. What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.

He said that in order to save the world you must serve the people in your life. "You gradually struggle less and less for an idea," Merton wrote, "and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Everybody on this earth was born," he said. "It's the one thing we all have in common.

Why did you choose to save me?" "I could not let you die." He placed the plate and glass on the kitchen counter. "But you have let goodness knows how many people die. Why me?" "You made me..." He leaned against the counter and looked at her. "You made me…feel.

she was a person, jen, and people aren't perfect. and she wasn't perfect. and that's okay

Men are frail creatures, of course; one does not expect them to exhibit the steadfastness of women.

Please. If you were mostly dead in the middle of the road I'd obviously stop. And then I'd watch you die." Kate to Will

Man is, without doubt, the defacer, the destroyer. But spending at least the last three years in trying to understand the enemy has almost seduced me to his side.

La mantequilla sube diez centavos. El ser humano baja.

Life is a journey for us all. We all face trials. We all have ups and downs. All of us are human. But we are also the masters of our fate. We are the ones who decide how we are going to react to life.

The particular human chain we're part of is central to our individual identity.

Oh, gosh, Olive. I'm so embarrassed." "No need to be," Olive tells her. "We all want to kill someone at some point." (179)

Sarah Payne, the day she told us to go to the page without judgment, reminded us that we never knew, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully.

And she said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.

But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. This may be the only thing in this world I know to be true.

I have said before: It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it's the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.

What I mean is, this is not just a woman's story. It's what happens to a lot of us, if we are lucky enough to hear that detail and pay attention

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.