Quotes about Humanity

Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.

Stories change people. History, real history, helps people understand each other, see each other from the inside out.

I was not alone in the human condition.

my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don't intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.

If Satan has toeholds that allow him to claw and climb from the underworld to this one, they lie in our failure to see ourselves in others.

The darkest hours of history have always been born of the efforts of one people to dehumanize another.

It's those little nicks and dents and imperfections of spirit that allow us to flow out into a thirsty world. It's our scars that allow us to relate to the scars of others, our suffering that connects us to others who suffer.

Ever'body got story. Ever'body got a reason for what they do. You eat off somebody else's plate, drink a their cup, could be, you'd be the same way.

That's what I'd say in my essay about To Kill a Mockingbird, I decided. I'd make sure the English teacher knew that the story of Jem and Scout and Atticus Finch wasn't just words someone made up in a book. There were people who lived it—people of all different

so many of the things we struggle with as human beings are not unique to our generation. There are lessons to be learned from those who've wandered these paths before us.