Humanity Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

For wishes are effectual but by will,
And that too much is impotent and void
In frail humanity; and time steals by
Sinful and wavering, and unredeem'd.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The reason I threw a rock at Billy Walker's stupid face was I had a crush on him. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession. I threw a rock at Billy Walker's beautiful face. How many times? At what velocity? The priest does not ask if I intended to mar the face. One of the things I love about the church is that motive is assumed: Because I am human. What alone interests the confessor is the form of humanity I wish to confess. Confession is constructed as we are constructed. The confessional box prefigures the American I. I am the sinner, irreducible. My soul is irreducible. Not my red hand.

Richard Rodriguez

Communication is merely an exchange of information, but connection is an exchange of our humanity.

Sean Stephenson

The mysteries of Nature and of humanity are not lessened, but increased, by the discoveries of philosophic skill.

Thomas Noon Talfourd

In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
'suffering humanity

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And the formation of man is the most pressing problem facing humanity.

It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement.

Robert Louis Stevenson

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.

Clarence Thomas

It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions - the world of the spirits.

Robinson Jeffers

Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.

Olive Schreiner

Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.

The task of each family is also the task of all humanity. This is to cherish the living, remember those who have gone before, and prepare for those who are not yet born.

It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate. You can deceive others, you can deceive your brain-self, but you can't deceive your mind-self — for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible. Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate.

Buckminster Fuller

In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.

If we consider the attitude of the Lord Himself, we understand that He accepted the free loving services of women for Himself and His Apostles and that women were among His disciples and most intimate confidants. Yet He did not grant them the priesthood, not even to His mother, Queen of Apostles, who was exalted above all humanity in human perfection and fullness of grace.

Can I drive you down to your house?
The man flicked an expressive glance along the car's length and shook his head. Thanks. I'll walk. There's still a law of averages.
And you can take that phrase and carve it on Humanity's headstone, Fay thought bitterly, but did not reply.

Science is an attempt to understand the universe and humanity's relationship to nature.

I wanted to change history and preserve humanity. But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.

[Capitalism]... is a great troll. It settles in a society, and then eats away silently. Eats more and more freedom, more humanity, more human rights, more ability to speak...

Ingeborg Refling Hagen

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs.

Buckminster Fuller

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence.

All things are already complete in oneself. There is no greater joy than to examine oneself and be sincere. When in one's conduct one vigorously exercises altruism, humanity is not far to seek, but right by him.

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us and what will be here a long time after we're gone.

The assumption of time is one of humanity's greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there's always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.

Richard Paul Evans