quotations about humanity
It wants not merely microscopic but telescopic power to know humanity in its essence; a power to discern its grandeur as well as its littleness, the infinity of its relations as well as the meanness of its pursuits. The human soul is a great deep. We must take into view the nebulous possibilities that are brooding and waiting there, and notice the buds and films of light that reveal themselves even in the darkest spaces.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera
The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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
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
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
The most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
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
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
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
ERIC HOFFER
The Ordeal of Change
Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.
REBECCA WEST
The Court and the Castle
To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves--these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi, November 30, 2007
Humanity toward a subdued foe is as noble as the valor displayed in encountering him.
G. D. PRENTICE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Old Wives' Tale
I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved--that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.
STANLEY KUBRICK
New York Times Film Review, January 30, 1972
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity.
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
letter, Oct. 1967
Humanity may be compared to an immense temple ruined, but now rebuilding, the numerous compartments of which represent the several nations of the earth. True, the different portions of the edifice present great anomalies; but yet the foundation is the same.
MME. D'AUBIGNE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The tapestry of the universe is vast and complex, with infinite patterns. While threads of tragedy may form the primary weave, humanity with its undaunted optimism still manages to embroider small designs of happiness and love.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
Perhaps we are the most selfish, oddest, and cunningest medley of beings of our size in the universe. However to complete the scale of being, it seems to have been requisite that the link of being called man must have been, and since under the Divine government, we have a positive existence, we cannot ultimately fail of being better than not to have been.
ETHAN ALLEN
Essay on the Universal Plenitude of Being and on the Nature and Immortality of the Human Soul and Its Agency