Quotes about Humanity

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

I'm going to tell you the most important secret of human life. The most critical need of the human soul is to be kind.

Life's piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood (and sisterhood) when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys.

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.

It's the messy parts that make us human, so we should embrace them too —pat ourselves on the back for getting through them rather than being angry for having gotten into them in the first place

It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear, even mine.

Seeing that our birth involves the blending of these two things—the body, on the one hand, that we share with animals, and, on the other hand, rationality and intelligence, that we share with the gods—most of us incline to this former relationship, wretched and dead though it is, while only a few to the one that is divine and blessed.

According to him the faculty of choice distinguishes humans from irrational animals. We can make considered choices among 'impressions' or 'appearances', meaning anything that comes within range of our senses, together with whatever thoughts and feelings these sensations evoke. While all animals are subject to impressions, those of humans differ by virtue of the fact that we possess the power of language and reason (both faculties expressed by the single word logos).

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it's still our deepest longing - but it's now also our deepest fear.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.