Quotes About Humanity

Grief has a ruthless commonality.

P]eople are not reducible to the commodities they consume.

There are . . . no masses; there are only ways of seeing [other] people as masses.

For truthfully, Your Honors, if a man can love his daughter and she love him in return, with honesty and restraint, then what act, what station, can we aspire to . . . that would be more civilized than that?

If it be contrary to man's nature that he should live like a mere pig, or a tiger, or any form of brute beast, it is equally contrary to his nature not to like a good dinner, and to shrink from a glass of good wine.

The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that… he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body.

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.

On the average, a person who cares for other people, for his country, or for mankind, is a happier man than one who does not; but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a man who cares for nothing but his own ease, or his own pocket? He cannot care for other people if he would. It is like preaching to the worm who crawls on the ground, how much better it would be for him if he were an eagle.

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors.

Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are capable of speedily becoming.

What we call men, are the subjects, the individual Stiles and Nokes; not the qualities by which their humanity is constituted. The name, therefore, is said to signify the subjects directly , the attributes indirectly ; it denotes the subjects, and implies, or involves, or indicates, or as we shall say henceforth connotes, the attributes. It is a connotative name.

Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable.

Bir kiÅŸi hariç bütün insanl?k ayn? görüÅŸte olsa, tek bir kiÅŸi kar?? görüÅŸte olsa, insanl???n o kiÅŸiyi susturma hakk?, o kiÅŸinin gücü yetse insanl??? susturma hakk?ndan fazla deÄŸildir.

Estou convencido de que as relações sociais dos dois sexos, que subordinam um sexo a outro em nome da lei, são más em si mesmas e constituem um dos principais obstáculos que se opuseram ao progresso da humanidade; estou convencido de que devem ser substituídas por uma igualdade perfeita.

Ruler of the Universe; and the popular, which he characteristically calls also the moral sanction, operating through the pains and pleasures arising from the favour or disfavour of our fellow-creatures.[*]

But this dependence, as it exists at present, is not an original institution, taking a fresh start from considerations of justice and social expediency—it is the primitive state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitigations and modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the general manners, and brought all human relations more under the control of justice and the influence of humanity.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us:

Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.

A simple test of a civilised human being is how they describe those who have treated them badly.

people are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them whole; only slaves are gathered by others.

The capacity for loyalty is stretched too thin when it tries to attach itself to the hypothetical solidarity of the human race. It needs to attach itself to specific people and specific places, not to an abstract ideal of universal human rights. We love particular men and women, not humanity in general.

The search for a material paradise is a flight away from humanity into the sterile nonlife of mechanisms where everything is perfect until it becomes junk.