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Humanity quotes

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“We cannot despair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“We're all human beings here, one like the other.” Franz Kafka, The Trial

“As Buddhists, while we practice our own teaching, we must respect other faiths, Christianity, Judaism, and so forth. We must recognize and appreciate their contributions over many past centuries to human society, and at this time we must strive...” 14th Dalai Lama, Kindness, Clarity, and Insight

“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being—neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another...” Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being.” Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“We are all brothers under the skin-and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.” Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

“We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The only social peril is darkness. Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Paper has more patience than people.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.” George Orwell, Animal Farm

“I speak to you as just another human being; as a simple monk.” 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Lecture

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.” Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

“But isn’t it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.” John Green, Paper Towns

“She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

“Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The Dutch fetiches, who have converted me, declare every Sunday that we are all of us children of Adam—blacks as well as whites. I am not a genealogist, but if these preachers tell truth, we are all second cousins.” Voltaire, Candide

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

“If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can’t predict what they will do.” Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“Where are the cartographers of human purpose? Where are the visions of hopeful futures, of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads?” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.” George Orwell, Animal Farm

“It is right in principle that those should be the best loved who have contributed most to the elevation of the human race and human life.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it

“Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing...” Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.” Confucius, Analects

“We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'

“We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.” Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” George Orwell, 1984

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“This inhuman place makes human monsters.” Stephen King, The Shining

“lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at.” Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Zone of Ahimsa or peace sanctuary concept, which is the central element of the Five-Point Peace Plan. I am convinced that it is of great importance not only for Tibet, but for peace and...” 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Lecture

“No longer did he feel shame for his hairless body or his human features, for now his reason told him that he was of a different race from his wild and hairy companions.” Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

“The division of the sexes is a biological given, not a moment in human history.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“There were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

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Related topics

equality truth freedom love madness marriage sweetness animals suffering life nature hope action forgiveness value family mercy crying evolution earth

Related authors

Malcolm X (2)
Carl Sagan (7)
George Orwell (4)
Albert Einstein (3)
14th Dalai Lama (3)
Ayn Rand (2)
John Steinbeck (2)
Stephen Hawking (2)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (2)
William Shakespeare (1)
Mark Twain (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)
Herman Melville (1)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (3)
John Green (3)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Stephen King (2)
Orson Scott Card (2)
Pope Francis (2)

Related sources

The world as I see it (3)
Long Walk to Freedom (1)
Cosmos (4)
Pale Blue Dot (3)
Animal Farm (2)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (2)
The Fault in Our Stars (2)
The Social Contract (2)
A Brief History of Time (2)
Ender's Game (2)
Laudato si' (2)
The Scarlet Letter (2)
Nobel Lecture (2)
The Trial (1)
Analects (1)
Kindness, Clarity, and Insight (1)
Les Misérables (1)
The Fountainhead (1)
East of Eden (1)
Tao Te Ching (1)