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
Our humanity were a poor thing but for the Divinity that stirs within us.
FRANCIS BACON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Human nature is like a bad clock; it might go right now and then, or be made to strike the hour, but its inward frame is to go wrong.
THOMAS ADAM
Private Thoughts on Religion
Human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
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
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
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
But further: if humanity be a unit, having a corporate moral character, a result would seem to follow which we have not yet considered. Ought not the conscience, in that case, to be painfully affected by the world's wickedness? Of course, it will not affect the uncultivated conscience, nor even if that faculty be but partially cultivated, but how is it with those who have attained to a high state of moral culture? Is the conscience, in its highest state of moral refinement and susceptibility, capable of being influenced only by the remembrance of its own personal acts? or do, then, the acts of others affect us also? pleasurably, if good; painfully, if evil? and do they so affect us by virtue of a secret consciousness, then only brought out, of our moral oneness?
ROBERT BROWN
A Lecture on the Social Unity of Humanity
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
In forming our notions of human nature, we are apt to make a comparison between men and animals, the only creatures endowed with thought that fall under our senses. Certainly this comparison is favourable to mankind. On the one hand, we see a creature whose thoughts are not limited by any narrow bounds, either of place or time; who carries his researches into the most distant regions of this globe, and beyond this globe, to the planets and heavenly bodies; looks backward to consider the first origin, at least the history of the human race; casts his eye forward to see the influence of his actions upon posterity and the judgments which will be formed of his character a thousand years hence; a creature, who traces causes and effects to a great length and intricacy, extracts general principles from particular appearances; improves upon his discoveries; corrects his mistakes; and makes his very errors profitable. On the other hand, we are presented with a creature the very reverse of this; limited in its observations and reasonings to a few sensible objects which surround it; without curiosity, without foresight; blindly conducted by instinct, and attaining, in a short time, its utmost perfection, beyond which it is never able to advance a single step. What a wide difference is there between these creatures! And how exalted a notion must we entertain of the former, in comparison of the latter.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature", Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
Humanity rolls out like a many-colored ribbon. See the diverse shades of that flower of the celestial gardens.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
In virtue of the mysterious connection of all organic forms (and unconsciously the feeling of the necessity of this connection lies within us), these new exotic forms present themselves to our fancy as exalted and ennobeld out of those which surrounded our childhood. Blind feeling, therefore, and the enchainment of the phenomena perceived by sense, in the same measure as reason and the combining faculty, lead us to the recognition which now penetrates every grade of humanity, that a common bond, according to determinate laws, and therefore eternal, embraces the whole of animated nature.
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
introduction, Cosmos: A Survey of the General Physical History of the Universe
Humanity is the equity of the heart.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
When the battle is ended, and victory assured, let humanity be exercised.
CYRUS THE GREAT
attributed, Day's Collacon
The truth is ... that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, Mrs. Dalloway
Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Under the sublime law of progress, the present outgrows the past. The great heart of humanity is heaving with the hopes of a brighter day. All the higher instincts of our nature prophesy its approach; and the best intellects of the race are struggling to turn that prophecy into fulfilment.
HORACE MANN
A Few Thoughts for a Young Man
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables