Humankind Quotes

“La humanitat és una cosa espectacular, tan preparada per estimar sense conviccions, sense complexos.”
― Manon Steffan Ros, The Blue Book of Nebo

“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“I can certainly imagine a man without hands, feet, or head, for it is only experience that teaches us that the head is more necessary than the feet. But I cannot imagine a man without thought; he would be a stone or an animal.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Let us then realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything. Such being as we have conceals from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise from nothingness, and the smallness of our being hides infinity from our sight.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty.
We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death.
We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness and incapable of either certainty or happiness.
We have been left with this desire as much as a punishment as to make us feel how far we have fallen.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Denying, believing and doubting are to men what running is to horses.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Nothing exists by itself alone. We all belong to each other; we cannot cut reality into pieces.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, At Home in the World: Stories and Essential Teachings from a Monk's Life

“Description of man. Dependence, desire for independence, needs.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The ordinary life of men is like that of saints. They all seek satisfaction, and differ only according to the object in which they locate it.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Civil war in man between reason and passions.

If there were only reason without passions.

If there were only passions without reason.

But since he has both he cannot be free from war, for he can only be at peace with the one if he is at war with the other.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“This is not the home of truth; it wanders unrecognized among men.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“No place works any different than any other place, really, beyond mere details. The universal human laws--need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain--are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture. What a powerful thing to know: that one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other--perhaps muted, exaggerated, or distorted, yes, but there nonetheless, and thus a source of comfort.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“The physical universe was always faithful. Run the right test and it responded with reality every time. But people were different. They could choose to disguise reality.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Space

“Religion might make us love God
but there is nothing stronger than religion
to make us despise man and hate humankind.”
― Sansal Boualem

“Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“History arranged everything that had ever happened into one epic tale of humankind. It turned scattered bones back into people and broken objects into stories.”
― Amelia Mellor, The Bookseller's Apprentice

“Ihmiskunta on lehmien loinen samalla tavoin kuin lapamato on ihmisen loinen. Ihmiskunta on imeytynyt lehmien utareisiin iilimadon tavoin. Ihminen on lehmän loinen, niin luultavasti määrittelisi ihmisen eläinopissa ei-ihminen.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Ihmisen todellinen hyvyys voi ilmetä täysin vapaasti ja puhtaana vain hänen asennoitumisessaan sellaiseen joka ei edusta mitään mahtia. Ihmiskunnan todellisen ja olennaisimman (niin syvällä piilevän ettemme näe sitä) moraalikoitoksen ratkaisee ihmisen suhtautuminen hänen armoillaan oleviin: eläimiin. Ja tässä ihminen on kärsinyt olennaisen perustappion josta kaikki muut tappiot johtuvat.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“When God looks at the earth--as though peering in a mirror--he wants to see himself reflected back. And the place he wants to see the clearest reflection is in his image bearers--both as individuals, but more importantly, in our relationships.”
― Carolyn Custis James, Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women

“God created humankind in his perfect image but the human race went in search of many schemes.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“This earth is hard symmetry
This earth of feverish war
This earth inflamed with hate”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“It’s time for a society as a whole to share an ecologically devoted imagination and re-evaluate what aspect of our future we put the most value on.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya, Safa Tempo: Poems New & Selected

“We are not just a species, we are also a cause - the cause of community - the cause of dignity - the cause of sensibility - the cause of life, light and sanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“Hope. The word jumped into my mind. You have to have hope. - Red Genesis by Kailin Gow and Kira G.”
― Kailin Gow, Kira G.

“For humankind to realize its full potential, it must become one with its own kind. God’s intervention will stop you from killing each other so that you may become unified, both spiritually and ideologically. Where there is division, there will be cohesion; Where there is mistrust, there will be understanding.”
― Kenneth B. Little, God's Intervention: A Second Chance for Humankind

“What a relief, what an unburdening to have closed the book on humankind.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“This idea of existing on a continuum doesn’t mean, “We are all good,” or “We are all, brothers and sisters, exactly the same,” or “All is forgiven, no matter what you do,” but, rather, something like: “Wherever you are on the human continuum, I can know you, approximately. I’m going to proceed on that basis: whatever tendencies are large in you, must be here somewhere, perhaps smaller and/or nascent, in or me.”
― George Saunders