Inspirational Quotes on Humanity

“You are earth; he whom you tread upon is no less, and he that treads upon you is no more.”

“The hardhearted person never sees people as a people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.”

“This is what happens: the sensitive and honest man opens his heart, and the business man listens and takes it all in, so that he can swallow up the honest fellow.”

“So he is my brother, and yours, too, Carl Schummel, for that matter," answered Peter, looking into Carl's eye. "We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances. have been bolstered up from evil since the hour we were born. A happy home and good parents might have made that man a fine fellow instead of what he is. God grant that the law may cure and not crush him!”

“my elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one would for the sick in hospitals.”

“If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a canyon and seen the birds swooping below you and the clouds stretched out over your head, or if you’ve ever stood in a field and felt a tiny rush of fear as you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in over the horizon, then you know what this means. There is something about the grandeur of creation that calls out to the human heart, saying, “You are not all there is!”

“what a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!”

“If you want to know a person thoroughly, you must go slowly and carefully, so as to avoid mistakes and prejudices, which are always difficult to correct or eradicate afterwards.”

“It is not the length of years but a multitude of generations that makes things obscure. For truth is only perverted when men change.”

“—Sangre…, sangre… —exclamó el joven con creciente vehemencia—. Todo el mundo la ha derramado. La sangre ha corrido siempre en oleadas sobre la tierra. Los hombres que la vierten como el agua obtienen un puesto en el Capitolio y el título de bienhechores de la humanidad. Analiza un poco las cosas antes de juzgarlas. Yo deseaba el bien de la humanidad, y centenares de miles de buenas acciones habrían compensado ampliamente esta única necedad, mejor dicho, esta torpeza, pues la idea no era tan necia como ahora parece. Cuando fracasan, incluso los mejores proyectos parecen estúpidos. Yo pretendía solamente obtener la independencia, asegurar mis primeros pasos en la vida. Después lo habría reparado todo con buenas acciones de gran alcance. Pero fracasé desde el primer momento, y por eso me consideran un miserable. Si hubiese triunfado, me habrían tejido coronas; en cambio, ahora creen que sólo sirvo para que me echen a los perros.”

“perchè non c'è nessun altro dal quale andare! Bisogna pure che ogni uomo abbia qualche posto dove andare. Poichè ci sono momenti in cui assolutamente bisogna andare da qualche parte!”

“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!”

“Before the other angels a man might sink: before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. If you had caught one breath of the air that came from him, you would have felt yourself taller than before. Though you were a cripple, your walk would have become stately: though a beggar, you would worn your robes magnanimously.”

“The enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.”

“You, my dear Rodion Romanovich (excuse an old man), are still a young man, in your first youth, so to speak, and therefore you esteem the human intellect above all things, like all young people. Abstract reasoning and the play of wit tempt you astray.”

“The worship of God is…the only thing which renders men superior to brutes, and makes them aspire to immortality.”

“ Dependence, desire for independence, needs.”

“The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity one has to meet every day.”

“The highest function of humanity is belief, that activity of spirit that proceeds upon the pathway of reason, until it comes to some great promontory, and then spreads its wings, and upon the basis of its earlier journeying, takes eternity into its grasp.”

“...Cuando os encontréis con algo que tiende a ser humano pero todavía no lo es, o que había sido humano en el pasado y ya no lo es, o debería ser humano y no lo es, no lo perdáis de vista y buscad vuestra hacha.”