Quotes about Humanity

History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful.

We must look elsewhere for Eden. Spring is good; but freedom and justice are better. Eden is moral, not material.

This book is a drama whose first character is the Infinite. Man is the second.

This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful. It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed.

To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.

I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren, and hear them cry without being tortured himself.

It has always belonged to the truly great and strong to care for the weak and feeble.

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.