Best 668 quotes in «humanism quotes» category

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Be a human being and you'd automatically be religious, but if you try to be a scripture-worm then you'd be neither religious, nor human – you’d be a biological bag of trash.

Bear every pain my friend - bear every agony, bear every torment, that the path of service has to offer, only then will destiny rise from the ashes of destitute and salute you with utmost veneration.

Bear in mind, practice is more important than principle. Principles without practice is worthless. Humans of principles may get famous for a short while, but it’s humans of practice who become the legends of human history.

Beauty is an illusion.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the eye itself can be coaxed, informed, and persuaded.

Become the destroyer of sects - become the breaker of privileges – become the messenger of equality – become the prophet of goodness.

Become a human and call upon the humans in others. And in time the world shall become a real abode of peace.

Become the bridge-builder, not the wall-raiser.

Be human. Free your mind

Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded.

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

Be naïve, be humble, be human, that's all that is needed to heal this wounded world.

Be strong, but don't let that strength blind you to such an extent that you become ignorant of other people's weaknesses.

Be the help to humanity, be the answer to humanity, be the light to humanity and be 911 to humanity.

Be the slaughterhouse for sacred cows.

Be the person who moves hearts - be the person who heals wounds - be the person who makes darkness disappear - be the person who makes colors reappear.

Be the person who moves hearts - be the person who heals wounds - be the person who makes darkness disappear - be the person who makes colors reappear. Be the one who never sleeps, so that rest of humanity can.

Brotherhood is my father, harmony is my mother and peace is my wife.

Build roads never seen before. Build bridges never existed before. Build a society never lived before. It is all in your hands now.

Burn so bright that the world comes to life.

Burn yourself so that the cold world can have some warmth.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

But humanism has always had a shadow side. No epoch is either purely good or purely evil. Good and evil are twin threads that run through the history of mankind. And often they intertwine.

But it will be asked: What is the force and power of the blessings and curses of men, even if these men be such giants as Plato and Aristotle? Does truth become more true because Aristotle blesses it, or does it become error because Plato curses it? Is it given men to judge the truths, to decide the fate of the truths? On the contrary, it is the truths which judge men and decide their fate and not men who rule over the truths. Men, the great as well as the small, are born and die, appear and disappear - but the truth remains. When no one had as yet begun to "think" or to "search," the truths which later revealed themselves to men already existed. And when men will have finally disappeared from the face of the earth, or will have lost the faculty of thinking, the truths will not suffer therefrom.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

By its very nature, the human mind, having a long history of animal instincts, is prone to inhuman corruption. That’s why it’s easier for a human to be a racist, but harder to be a human – it’s easier for a human to be homophobic, but harder to be a human – it’s easier for a human to be promiscuous, but harder to be a human - it’s easier for a human to be an inhuman, but harder to be a human. Yes, it’s hard – yes it’s less natural, than the alternative, yet, this very unnatural, hard endeavor of the mind determines whether you and I are going to raise a society of true humans or a society of good-looking savages.

By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our main source of authority and meaning, and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms.’ In the eighteenth century, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. The Dataist revolution will probably take a few decades, if not a century or two. But then the humanist revolution too did not happen overnight. At first, humans kept on believing in God, and argued that humans are sacred because they were created by God for some divine purpose. Only much later did some people dare say that humans are sacred in their own right, and that God doesn’t exist at all. Similarly, today most Dataists say that the Internet-of-All-Things is sacred because humans are creating it to serve human needs. But eventually, the Internet-of-All-Things may become sacred in its own right.

By calling yourself American, European, Russian, Asian or anything else, you destroy the very fabric of humanity.

Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect.

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because “friends react on one another” and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi — with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction — always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that “non-attachment” is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is “higher”. The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all “radicals” and “progressives”, from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

Come my friend. Come and walk with me in the path ahead that awaits you with open arms – the path of humanism – the path where every pedestrian is simply a human, not a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Mexican, American, Canadian, British, Australian, Russian, Asian, African, European or anything else.

Dependency on drugs is quite easily proclaimed by the so-called intellectual society as lethal, while that very society has been ever-lastingly dependent upon varied forms of ideologies, be it religious, atheistic, political or any other. They say, “don’t do drugs for it’s dangerous for you”, but they never say, “don’t do ideology for it’s dangerous for your society”.

Desperto um belo dia no mundo e me atribuo um único direito: exigir do outro um comportamento humano. Um único dever: o de nunca, através de minhas opções, renegar minha liberdade.

Discriminations suit animals, not humans. And yet, the unfortunate reality is, it is the humans that discriminate each other on the grounds of imaginary labels, not the animals. This way, animals are more civilized than humans.

Disinfect the world my friend – disinfect it with your thinking – disinfect it with your actions – disinfect it with your existence.

DIVINE NECESSITY creates “others” even among family members who become good to be killed by family members… HUMAN NECESSITY commands man to resurrect the supposed reason for which God supposedly shattered humanity in Babylon: The “Covenant” among men.

Don't Fear, They Judge Anyway, Show your Unhappy Side too, I am there; Someday many of us will Too. Of all the Rich & Poor, Of all the Caste & Creed, We are Humans First, To Curb our Primary Thirst- Love!

Do you think to make man good by enacting more laws?

Ein ehrlicher Mann mag stecken, in welchem Kleide er will, man muss ihn lieben.

Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both.

Enlightenment humanism, then, is far from being a crowd-pleaser. The idea that the ultimate good is to use knowledge to enhance human welfare leaves people cold. Deep explanations of the universe, the planet, life, the brain? Unless they use magic, we don't want to believe them! Saving the lives of billions, eradicating disease, feeding the hungry? Bo-ring. People extending their compassion to all of humankind? Not good enough—we want the laws of physics to care about us! Longevity, health, understanding, beauty, freedom, love? There's got to be more to life than that!

Eudora Welty singles out for praise Austen's "habit of seeing both sides of her own subject - of seeing it indeed in the round". ... Both men and women can be vain about their appearances, selfish about money, overawed by rank, and limited by parochialism; both men and women can function capably, think profoundly, feel deeply, create imaginatively, laugh wittily, and love faithfully. Without vindicating the rights of anyone directly, Austen posits a humanism far ahead of her time. "How really modern she is, after all," Welty concludes of Austen.

Everyone doesn’t need to have the same beliefs, we just need to start believing in everyone.

Every situation is of man's making and can only contain what man contains.

Everything else is expendable, but not humanhood. Every scripture, every god, every angel, every messiah, every church, every temple, every mosque, every doctrine – everything is expendable, not the innate humanhood that Mother Nature has bestowed on you through the process of natural selection.

Every word that comes out of my neurons is to make humanity see that there are more things in our biology that make us one, than there are to set us apart. My goal is simple. It is to take the human civilization with me on the path of sweet general harmony.

Faith in God is optional, but faith in the self – in the spirit within, is imperative. Have faith in yourself. Have faith in the human first, then God if you want.