quotations about humanity
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Second Meditations
When superiors are fond of showing their humanity, inferiors try to outstrip one another in their practice of it.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
The human race is just getting started.... The cerebral cortex is only a hundred thousand years old. It's still a baby, sucking teat and eating Cheerios. We might get better, maybe even wise, if we can last another thousand years.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
A Dangerous Age
Human nature is hard to overcome.
PERIANDER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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"
I think that my art, my poetry, prose and music come from these cracks in my being, these ley lines where spirit is said to reside. I have come out of the horror of that experience having lost my faith in the inherent goodness of humanity, yet curiously appreciating even more the effort it takes to be good.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic
Nothing human disgusts me unless it's unkind.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
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
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON
Invisible Man
Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span,
Protracted with sorrow from day to day,
Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,
Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!
ARISTOPHANES
The Birds
I tend to regard the whole human race as just a lot of different subspecies of pest.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Humanity, once put off, is put off for worse, as well as for better; if we take not good heed to live angelically afterward, we must count on becoming devilish.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
One can follow any religion, one can follow any practice or path, but one must be humane.
HAIDAKHAN BABAJI
The Teachings of Babaji, January 22, 1983
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
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
The most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
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
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
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER
The Ordeal of Change