Quotes About Humanity

All those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know.

C'est par le travail que la femme a conquis sa dignité d'être humain; mais ce fut une conquête singulièrement dure et lente.

Constituye una paradoja criminal rehusar a la mujer toda actividad pública, cerrarle las carreras masculinas, proclamar en todos los dominios su incapacidad y confiarle, al mismo tiempo, la empresa más delicada y más grave de cuantas existen...la formación de un ser humano.

C'est en risquant sa vie que l'homme s'élève au-dessus de l'animal.

In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that right now they do most obviously exist.

I cannot withdraw into myself. I exist, outside myself and everywhere in the world. There is not an inch of my path which does not encroach on the path of another: there is no way of being that can prevent me from overflowing myself at every moment. This life that I weave with my own substance, it offers other men a thousand unknown faces, it crosses impetuously their fate.

The worst curse on woman is her exclusion from warrior expeditions; it is not in giving life but in risking his life that man raises himself above the animal; this is why throughout humanity, superiority has been granted not to the sex that gives birth, but to the one that kills.

The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general ; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.

Humans are the beings whose essence is in not having an essence

But an action which wants to serve man ought to be careful not to forget him on the way, if it chooses to fulfill itself blindly, it will lose its meaning or will take on an unforeseen meaning; for the goal is not fixed once & for all; it is defined all along the road which leads up to it.

It is not a matter of approaching a fixed limit: absolute Knowledge or the happiness of man or the perfection of beauty; all human effort would then be doomed to failure, for with each step forward the horizon recedes a step; for man it is a matter of pursuing the expansion of his existence and of retrieving this very effort as an absolute. Science

One can not, without absurdity, indefinitely sacrifice each generation to the following one; human history would then be only an endless succession of negations which would never return to the positive.

No existe muerte natural: nada de lo que sucede al hombre es natural puesto que su sola presencia cuestiona al mundo. Todos los hombres son mortales: pero para todos los hombres la muerte es un accidente y, aunque la concozca y la acepte, es una violencia indebida.

Nature asserts itself in the face of Spirit which it denies while assuming it; the individual is again found in the collectivity within which he is lost; & each man's death is fulfilled by being cancelled out into the Life of Mankind.

El hombre se eleva sobre el animal al arriesgar la vida, no al darla, por eso la humanidad acuerda superioridad al sexo que mata y no al que engendra.

A representação do mundo, como o próprio mundo, é operação dos homens; eles descrevem-no do ponto de vista que lhes é peculiar, e que confundem com a verdade absoluta.

Mi acción no es para otro sino lo que él mismo la hace ser: ¿cómo puedo, pues, saber de antemano lo que hago?; y si no lo sé, ¿cómo puedo proponerme obrar por la humanidad?

Moreover, humanity is something other than a species: it is an historical becoming; it is defined by the way it assumes natural facticity.

One is not the neighbor of anyone; one makes the other a neighbor by making oneself his neighbor through an act

Así, todo esfuerzo del hombre por establecer una relación con el infinito es vana. No puede entrar en relación con Dios, sino a través de la humanidad, y en la humanidad, no alcanza jamás sino a ciertos hombres, y no puede crear sino situaciones limitadas. Si sueña con dilatarse al infinito, se pierde rápidamente. Se pierde en sueños pues, de hecho, no deja de estar ahí, de testimoniar por sus proyectos infinitos su presencia finita.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

A mi alrededor se interrogaban sobre la suerte que amenazaba a millones de hombres, era también mi suerte; y a mí sólo me importaba una sonrisa, una sonrisa que no detendría las bombas atómicas, que no podía nada contra nada, ni por nadie; pero me ocultaba todo.

The fact of being a human being is infinitely more important than all the singularities that distinguish human beings;

Membre d'une espèce privilégiée, bénéficiant au départ d'une avance considérable, si dans l'absolu un homme ne valait pas plus que moi, je jugerais que, relativement, il valait moins : pour le reconnaître comme mon égal, il fallait qu'il me dépassât.