Humanity Quotes

...he was part of a family whether he wanted to be or not, the family of humanity, more often than not a frustrating and contentious clan, flawed and often deeply confused, but also periodically noble and admirable, with a common destiny that every member shared.

~ Dean Koontz

Most of us, most of the time, act within plays the lines of which were written long ago, the images of which require recognition, not invention.

~ Sidney W. Mintz

Most people would have probably lost count around seven. This was, Harry knewfrom his extensive reading on logic and arithmetic, the largest number that most peoplecould visually appreciate. Put seven dots on a page, and most people can take a quickglance and declare, “Seven.” Switch to eight, and the majority of humanity was lost.

~ Julia Quinn

They are so frail humans. So easily crumpled and broken, like flower petals under foot.

~ Jennifer Melzer

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

~ William Shakespeare

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity.In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

~ Rick Yancey

[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.

~ Tiffany Madison

That's my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it's not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now.I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you killed, but who live in me.But I am more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me.I am humanity.

~ Rick Yancey

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others.

~ Alexander Von Humboldt

The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.

~ Criss Jami

[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

~ Herman Melville

The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image.

~ Charles W. Chesnutt

Humanity is the higher meaning of our planet, the nerve that connects this part of it with the upper world, the eye it raises to heaven.

~ Novalis

I laughed when I read about being born with two hearts, one of which is devoted only to destroying humanity.

~ Rachel Klein

This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.

~ Michael Oakeshott

Extreme nationalism objectifies and dehumanizes those from other countries.

~ Bryant Mcgill

It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.

~ Thomas More

I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.

~ Alan Bennett

In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire--in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation--that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive--belongs to the particularity of being human.

~ Christos Yannaras

Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for any dinner, yet it was like that. I want--I want--I want--was all that she could think about--but just what this real want was she did no know.

~ Carson Mccullers

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

~ Martin Cruz Smith

Nothing renews my faith in humanity more than the exchange of compassion so profound that mere words cannot embrace it.

~ Tiffany Madison

Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.

~ Daniel Quinn

In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.

~ Timothy B. Tyson

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same—dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits—the repetition through the ages is comedy.

~ Dawn Powell

Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

~ Wendell Berry

But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman - And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone - And I don’t care what you ladies think of me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from both clubs and I’ll — I’ll pull up every weed off every Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too — and — I just dare anyone to stop me!

~ Margaret Mitchell

Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yes, cannibals. People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.

~ Doris Lessing

You tell me that you sometimes view the dark side of your Diana, and there no doubt you discover many Spots which I rather wish were erased, than conceal'd from you. Do not judge by this, that your opinion is an indifferent thing to me, (were it so, I should look forward with a heavey Heart,) but it is far otherways, for I had rather stand fair there, and be thought well of by Lysander than by the greater part of the World besides. I would fain hope that those faults which you discover, proceed more, from a wrong Head, than a bad Heart. E'er long May I be connected with a Friend from whose Example I may form a more faultless conduct, and whose benevolent mind will lead him to pardon, what he cannot amend.

~ Abigail Adams

Hu-man, Hu-mility, Hu-manity, is a title of nobility of the Perfected One, one who has knowledge of its self, and living its essence

~ Aainaa-Ridtz

I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.

~ Manu Herbstein

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

~ Seth Godin

Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

~ Terry Pratchett

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)

~ Elie Wiesel

The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.

~ Paul Theroux

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

For every item that carries the darkness of humanity there's one that holds the light. And that light is worth believing in. Not just in others, but in yourself as well.

~ C.m. Rayne

Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.

~ John Cassavetes