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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

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

“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

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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

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

“There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.” Pope Francis, Laudato si'

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

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

“I may not be a human, but I am a man” Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” Albert Camus, The Plague

“Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

“Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal.” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

“She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human.” H. G. Wells, The Time Machine

“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

“We’re all of us a million bits put together the right way.” Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian...” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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Related topics

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

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)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (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 Fault in Our Stars (2)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (2)
The Social Contract (2)
The Scarlet Letter (2)
A Brief History of Time (2)
Ender's Game (2)
Laudato si' (2)
Nobel Lecture (2)
The Trial (1)
East of Eden (1)
Les Misérables (1)
Analects (1)
Kindness, Clarity, and Insight (1)
The Stand (1)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1)