quotations about humanity
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
Humanity
is the start of the race; I say
Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to
break through, the coal to break into fire,
The atom to be split.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Road Stallion"
In the same proportion in which humanity progresses towards perfection as humanity, its union becomes, and will become, more manifest.
ROBERT BROWN
A Lecture on the Social Unity of Humanity
If humanity was good at anything, it was shooting off its collective mouth.
ROB THURMAN
Nightlife
Nothing human disgusts me unless it's unkind.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anaïs Nin
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER
The Ordeal of Change
We see humanity, not as it originally came from the hands of its Creator, but such as the events of thousands of years have made it; we mistake habit for nature, and lose the power of distinguishing between the natural and the artificial; it is desirable to recover and to exercise this power; to analyze men, society; to ascertain the original condition of the one, and trace the history of the other; to ascertain the rights and duties of one, and the origin, objects, and legitimate powers of the other.
NATHANIEL GREENE
The People's Own Book
Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
JAMES BALDWIN
No Name in the Street
But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.
RICK YANCEY
The 5th Wave
Before one eye at least in the universe the feeble spring and the mighty river are one; He sees it all mapped out from its source in weakness to its end in power; we never rise high enough into the upper air of thought and humanity, to see like Him our human fellow-rivers in their feeble struggles through the rocks and stones in their path, but as they shall be hereafter, far away, perhaps a thousand years to come, down cataracts of death, and past long deserts of unknown worlds; but as they shall surely be at last, each flowing on, a majestic benediction through the universe, reflecting on his ever-swelling bosom the infinite glory of God.
FRANCES POWER COBBE
The City of Victory
To improve humanity, we must know it as it is, and remove every shred of rag or fragment of plaister which hides its foulness and dishonour--not coldly and unmoved, but compassionately; and so by degrees we may raise it from the littleness, the turpitude, the radical corruption of contemporary life to the true dignity of men, as rational and moral beings.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Humanity is the sum of all men taken together, and each is only so far worthy of esteem as he knows how to appreciate all.
ANNA C. LYNCH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Humanity has a strange fondness for following processions. Get four men following a banner down the street, and, if that banner is inscribed with rhymes of pleasant optimism, in an hour, all the town will be afoot, ready to march to whatever tune the leaders care to play.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
"A Humble Protest,", Harvard Monthly, 1916
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Second Meditations
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON
Invisible Man
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Education of a British-Protected Child
The one idea which history exhibits as evermore developing itself into greater distinctness, is the idea of humanity; the noble endeavor to throw down all the barriers erected between men by prejudice and one-sided views; and by setting aside the distinctions of religion, country, and color, to treat the whole human race as one brotherhood, having one great object--the free development of our spiritual nature.
A. GEDDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera