Humanity Quotes

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Victor Hugo

Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.

Victor Hugo

There is but one rule of conduct for a man _ to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice, but the cost not to do right is far more dear: You pay in the integrity of your manhood, in your honor, in strength of character; and, for a timely gain, you barter the infinite.

Archer G. Jones

You shall hear how Hiawatha prayed and fasted in the forest,Not for greater skill in hunting,Not for greater craft in fishing,Not for triumphs in the battle,And renown among the warriors,But for profit of the people,For advantage of the nations.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The

I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!as cited by Susan Sackett, author of Inside Trek: A Star Trek Memoir, used with permission

Gene Roddenberry, Hollywood Blvd

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

Denis Diderot

Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.

Terry Pratchett

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

Orson Scott Card

Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.

William Blake

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Mahatma Gandhi

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them

Henry David Thoreau

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense... human rights invented America.

Jimmy Carter

Oh. I see. People don't want to see what can't possibly exist.

Terry Pratchett

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

Thomas Paine

Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.

Terry Pratchett

I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.

Charles Monroe Schulz

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

George Orwell