quotations about humanity
Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
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Love in the Time of Cholera
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
RALPH ELLISON
Invisible Man
Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.
REBECCA WEST
The Court and the Castle
I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
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
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
Are we not unwittingly expressing the unconscious yearning of the fractions to merge once more in the sweet kinship of the unit, of the ninths and the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninths of humanity to merge their differences in the mighty generalisation Man, of man to merge his finite existence in the mysterious infinite, the undivided, indivisible One, to 'be made one,' as theology phrases it, 'with God'? How the complex life of our time longs to return to its first happy state of simplicity, we feel on every hand.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
"Fractional Humanity", Prose Fancies
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity.
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
letter, Oct. 1967
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
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Education of a British-Protected Child
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anaïs Nin
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
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
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
To improve humanity, we must know it as it is, and remove every shred of rag or fragment of plaister which hides its foulness and dishonour--not coldly and unmoved, but compassionately; and so by degrees we may raise it from the littleness, the turpitude, the radical corruption of contemporary life to the true dignity of men, as rational and moral beings.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Humanity toward a subdued foe is as noble as the valor displayed in encountering him.
G. D. PRENTICE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Our humanity were a poor thing but for the Divinity that stirs within us.
FRANCIS BACON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Old Wives' Tale