Quotes & Sayings About Humanitarian

He [Will Rogers] was America's most complete human document. One-third humor. One-third humanitarian. One-third heart. — Damon Runyon

I gave a very dear friend of mine my humanitarian award. Because you don't need an award to be, or not be, a humanitarian. — Elizabeth Taylor

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite — George Orwell

We estimate that humanitarian agencies have access to about 350,000 vulnerable people in Darfur - only about one third of the estimated total population in need. — Jan Egeland

If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them. — Ayn Rand

We do foreign assistance for altruistic reasons, certainly for humanitarian reasons, of course. But the main reason we do foreign assistance is we do it in the American national interest. — Roger Wicker

A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism. — Irving Babbitt

Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives. — Paul Karl Feyerabend

Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it. — Henry David Thoreau

We need to shift from an economic organizing principle for human civilization, to a humanitarian organizing principle. Making money more important than your own children is a pathological way for an individual to run their affairs, and it's a pathological way for a society to run its affairs. — Marianne Williamson

From the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which over crowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. — Robert A. Heinlein

I think when I started going to war zones and started covering humanitarian issues, it became a calling because I realized I had a voice, and I can give people without a voice a voice ... and now it is something that sits inside of me every day. — Lynsey Addario

I'm not a do-gooder. It embarrassed me to be classified as a humanitarian. I simply take part in activities that I believe in. — Gregory Peck

We need to change society's ordering principle from economic to humanitarian values, from money as the bottom line to love as the bottom line. — Marianne Williamson

I think humanitarian organizations should acknowledge the progress more than they do. I think that one reason people are reluctant to provide more help to Africa, for example, is this sense that it's just hopeless, in a way that I think is untrue. — Nicholas Kristof

I like to think of myself as a humanitarian. — Seal

Being a humanitarian, supporting animal rights activists, human rights activists, it's all the same. — Daryl Hannah

The humanitarian argument is so selective I find it difficult to swallow. It's not even so much about the choice as to where we should get involved and where we shouldn't. — Michael Hastings

They think my father has a lack of concern for human rights, but regardless of details, the Americans should be humanitarian in dealing with his family, because we are human. Saddam has three young ladies and they have children, I have five, Rana has four, and Hala has two. Therefore, our father is very dear to us. His grandchildren love him a lot. Why aren't humanitarian factors taken into account? — Raghad Hussein

No small part in the new awareness of the horrors of genocide was a willingness of Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. Chalk and Jonassohn note that these memoirs are historically unusual.146 Survivors of earlier genocides had treated them as humiliating defeats and felt that talking about them would only rub in history's harsh verdict. With the new humanitarian sensibilities, genocides became crimes against humanity, and survivors were witnesses for the prosecution. — Steven Pinker

Peace and the survival of life on earth as we know it are threatened by human activities which lack a commitment to humanitarian values. Destruction of nature and nature's resources result from ignorance, greed and lack of respect for the earth's living things. — Dalai Lama

Pommel of his saddle and his helmet with a nose-piece, arms which might well prevent him from reaching any conclusions based on humanitarian logic, — Jose Saramago

There's so many issues tied to the meat industry. I mean, social, environmental, humanitarian - all of them. I know that when I'm eating that I'm not hurting the planet, I'm not hurting other people on this planet, I'm not hurting animals ... and I'm not hurting nature. — Maggie Q

It has been said that the people of this country are deeply interested in the humanitarian and philanthropic considerations involved in [the Eastern Question]. All must appreciate such feelings. But I am mistaken if there be not a yet deeper sentiment on the part of the people of this country, one with which I cannot doubt your lordships will ever sympathise, and that is - the determination to maintain the Empire of England. — Benjamin Disraeli

At this critical time, I am grateful to Sandra Bullock for once again demonstrating her leadership, compassion and belief in our global humanitarian mission. Sandra continues to enable our lifesaving work and is a model for personal generosity. — Sandra Bullock

In a 1995 Journal of Trauma article entitled "Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research on Injury Prevention," Albert King calculated that vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-ons. For every corpse whose head has hammered a windshield, 68 lives per year are saved. — Mary Roach

Africans are on the front lines of humanitarian efforts, distributing life-saving aid in dangerous environments. Africans comprise the vast majority of peacekeepers in civil conflict on that continent. Africans for the most part lead peace negotiations for the wars being fought in Africa. — John Prendergast

Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp. — David Cameron

The UN is committed to the goal of ensuring that all nations share in economic, social, & scientific progress. It delivers humanitarian assistance to the victims of wars and natural disasters. — Bill Bradley

Because you can't intervene everywhere, you don't conclude you can't intervene anywhere. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment. — Agatha Christie

Because there's no reason to think Paige had to eat anything. Paige is not a low demon. She's a little girl. A vegetarian. A born humanitarian. A budding Dalai Lama, for chrissake. She only attacked the angel to defend me. That's all.
Besides, she didn't eat him, she just ... gnawed on him a little. — Susan Ee

What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. — Isabel Paterson

More than Christianity, the religion of Victorian times was a belief in human advance - the conviction that freed from ignorance and superstition, humanity could expand its power and be master of its destiny. — John N. Gray

Today, we have more than 110,000 men and women deployed in conflict zones around the world. They come from nearly 120 countries ... Thanks to their efforts, life-saving humanitarian assistance can be delivered and economic development can begin. — Ban Ki-moon

I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment. — Steven Pinker

The U.N.'s humanitarian agencies rely on charitable donations from the public as well as the generosity of governments to continue their lifesaving work in response to natural disasters, armed conflicts and other emergencies. — Ban Ki-moon

The long-lasting humanitarian impact of these inhuman weapons continues to deny communities the opportunity to rebuild long after the end of the conflicts. — Kofi Annan

Fourth, we will continue providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this terrorist organization. This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities. We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands. — Barack Obama

I've made humanitarian causes and my children much more my priority than the Hollywood scene, being liked and getting movie parts. — Sharon Stone

We're interested in it because it would provide a land bridge up to Uzbekistan, which provides us, among other things, a humanitarian pathway for us to move supplies out of Central Asia and down into Afghanistan — Tommy Franks

Ethiopia's government is doing a commendable job of working closely with donors and humanitarian organizations to educate parents about child marriage, and to support organizations like the Hamlin Fistula Hospital. — Helene D. Gayle

Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations. — Kofi Annan

I love traveling. It not only opens my mind up, but it also allows me to use my fame in another way through humanitarian works and stuff, and being an influence around the world. — Chris Tucker

Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history, — Antonio Guterres

I see this as my humanitarian legacy. We're prepared to pay billions. — Sheldon Adelson

U.A.E.'s continuously growing initiatives in the field of charitable and humanitarian works became a basic component of our foreign activities. — Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

The collapse of communism and a recognition of its economic and humanitarian catastrophes took the romance out of revolutionary violence and cast doubt on the wisdom of redistributing wealth at the point of a gun. — Steven Pinker

An important early test of donor interest in sponsoring a GM DT crop project for Africa was provided in 2004-05, when Monsanto took the initiative and offered to share its newly discovered DT traits for humanitarian purposes. — Robert Paarlberg

But propaganda, fear, and threats of being accused of being unpatriotic and treasonous are powerful means of controlling the young soldiers who are told their fighting is crucial for the country's survival. It's the young soldiers who must risk and even lose their lives. It's the typical politicians, who have been around for thousands of years, who have continued the carnage with their humanitarian lies and demands for wars. — Ron Paul

The basic problem affecting the Pakistan today is human rights. Islamic fundamentalists have no roots among the common people and while they are pushing hard for religious fundamentalists to take hold, the common people still seek change through humanitarian and common human rights law. — Abdul Sattar Edhi

Unfortunately, the greater the humanitarian outreach, the greater the violence required to achieve it. — Ron Paul

The growth of writing and literacy strikes me as the best candidate for an exogenous change that helped set off the Humanitarian Revolution. — Steven Pinker

... food is capable of feeding far more than a rumbling stomach. Food is life; our well-being demands it. Food is art and magic; it evokes emotion and colors memory, and in skilled hands, meals become greater than the sum of their ingredients. Food is self-evident; plucked right from the ground or vine or sea, its power to delight is immediate. Food is discovery; finding an untried spice or cuisine is for me like uncovering a new element. Food is evolution; how we interpret it remains ever fluid. Food is humanitarian: sharing it bridges cultures, making friends of strangers pleasantly surprised to learn how much common ground they ultimately share. — Anthony Beal

Bono is my inspiration - not only as a rock star but as a humanitarian. We aren't just put on this earth to sell records. Maybe it's because of my upbringing, but I do consider myself a moral guy. — Jesse McCartney

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it. — Ronald Reagan

We need more than new policies. We need a new worldview, and a new bottom line. We need to replace economic values as our ordering principle, with humanitarian values as our ordering principle. — Marianne Williamson

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography. — Sebastiao Salgado

I never use the words HUMANIST or HUMANITARIAN, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature. — Gregory Maguire

How did the American people ever reach this point where they believe that US aggression in the Middle East will make us safe when it does the opposite? How did the American people ever reach the point where they believe that fighting unconstitutional wars is required to protect our freedoms and our Constitution? Why do we allow the NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc. to destroy our liberty at home, as part of the Global War on Terror, with a pretext that they are preserving our liberty? Why are the lying politicians reelected and allowed to bankrupt our country, destroy our money, and enter wars without the proper consent? Why do the American people suffer in silence and not scream "Enough is enough!"? We've had enough of the "humanitarian do-gooders" and the proponents of "American exceptionalism" who give us nothing but war, economic suffering, and less freedom. This can and must be stopped. — Ron Paul

Reducing the price of cancer drugs is a humanitarian move. — Yusuf Hamied

We even save a few lives, but only a fraction of the lives that need to be saved. Soon, we will leave and when we leave there will be nothing to take our place. The meningitis epidemic, cholera, measles, typhoid fever, all preventable diseases, will return and continue as before. The only solution is a political solution, national public health programs, responsible corporations who reap only as much as they sow. Shell Oil with a conscience. Nigeria doesn't need us. What we do here is less than nothing. We take the pressure off the powers that be, making it easier for those who plunder to keep on plundering. This is the humanitarian aid paradox. — Pamela Grim

The cinema, like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and desirousness which must be repressed in a humanitarian ordering of life. — Carl Jung

A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses. — Irving Babbitt

Hamas is a humanitarian organization. — Nancy Pelosi

The songs that I've written about Africa, and AIDS and HIV and about the power of humanitarian love, those songs, I'm gonna sing them because I know that it's real. — India.Arie

You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire. — Sarah Vowell

East DR Congo Faces Catastrophic Humanitarian Crisis 4,450 — Alain De Botton

And I want to find a way to be of service to humanity. I think that's crucial. So want to be an artist and a servant, a humanitarian, and I want to play goofy weirdoes. — Rainn Wilson

It supported participatory governance in both friendly and adversarial countries; it played a leading role in articulating new humanitarian principles, and since 1945 it has, in five wars and on several other occasions, spent American blood to redeem them in distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them. American idealism and exceptionalism were the driving forces behind the building of a new international order. — Henry Kissinger

As a very young man I signed a declaration - 'I renounce war and will never support another'. That was in 1939 and I have maintained this stand throughout the whole period, including WW2, as a Conscientious Objector.Worked to achieve Peace since. It is necessary for individuals to take this stand and maintain it. War never solves anything - it accentuates any problem, whatever it is, and makes matters worse. There is no moral or humanitarian justification for it. — Donald Saunders

Religion to be true must satisfy what may be termed humanitarian economics, that is, where the income and the expenditure balance each other. — Mahatma Gandhi

You're quite the humanitarian. By the way, thanks a fuck of a lot for leaving me off your who-to-save list.
You're on it, Alfredo Garcia. I just didn't want to say it out loud and have you call me Nancy or Tinker Bell.
Yeah, I would have done that. — Richard Kadrey

Scientific knowledge does not contain within itself directions for its humanitarian use. — Thomas Szasz

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness. — Cate Blanchett

The first question is something immediate
and immediately, we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. — George Clooney

Forcing people to be generous isn't humanitarian, effective, compassionate or moral. Only acts that are truly voluntary for all concerned can be truly compassionate. — Harry Browne

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them. The possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us. — Jacques Barzun

I have long understood that climate change is not only an environmental issue - it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well. — Frances Beinecke

If, as we decided in Munich, there will be a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian assistance can flow into Syria - then this will open the door for the beginning of the political transition process. — Adel Al-Jubeir

History is laden with belligerent leaders using humanitarian rhetoric to mask geopolitical aims. History also shows how often ill-informed moralism has led to foreign entanglements that do more harm than good. — Samantha Power

We recognize that North Korea is in severe financial straits, and they have decided to use their resources to build their military, rather than to feed their people and to take care of the various humanitarian responsibilities that they have. — Benjamin Carson

You are fortunate to be an Aquarius because you are known as the humanitarian zodiac sign. You are progressive in your thinking, which is reflected in every aspect of your life. You do not like being told how to live your life, and you will make your decisions clear to anyone who dares question them. You are energetic, with a zest for life. Unfortunately, society's boundaries can still be insurmountable, even for an Aquarian such as yourself. You are very much in charge of your own destiny and, if something or someone gets in the way of your aspirations, you won't give up on your goals easily. This perseverance earns you respect from others, even if they disagree with what you are hoping to accomplish. — Rosemary Breen

I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state - a new idea, this - even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms. — Boris Yeltsin

Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, a distinguished physician whose daughter Monica had disappeared into the precincts of that hellish place. What do you find to say to a doctor and a humanitarian who has been gutted by the image of a starving rat being introduced to his daughter's genitalia? Like hell itself the school was endorsed and blessed by priests, in case any stray consciences needed to be stilled. — Christopher Hitchens

The same philantropists who give millions for AIDS or education in tolerance have ruined the lives of thousands through financial speculation and thus created the conditions for the rise of the very intolerance that is being fought. In the 1960s and '70s it was possible to buy soft-porn postcards of a girl clad in a bikini or wearing an evening gown; however, when one moved the postcard a little bit or looked at it from a slightly different perspective, her clothes magically disappeared to reveal the girl's naked body. When we are bombarded by the heartwarming news of a debt cancellation or a big humanitarian campaign to eradicate a dangerous epidemic, just move the postcard a little to catch a glimpse of the obscene figure of the liberal communist at work beneath. — Slavoj Zizek

Whenever I hear and see a politician or a military leader, a bank of American flags at his back, trying to convince us of the rightness of a policy or a deed that will cause harm to others; when I am almost convinced myself that setting humanitarian concern in abeyance can be justified in the interest of a greater good, I pause and ask myself what my brain-smoked friends would have to say. — James Lee Burke

You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams? — Ursula K. Le Guin

It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities. — Naguib Mahfouz

The purpose of any charity is simply to turn people's mirrors into windows. An outward view of the world's needs are vast in comparison to an inward one. — Shannon L. Alder

I was proud to witness American Jewish organizations found the Save Darfur Coalition in June 2004 to mobilize a coordinated interfaith response to the ongoing humanitarian disaster. — Jan Schakowsky

If you want to teach real religion to the kids, throw away the Bible, the Vedas, the Quran and all the scriptures, and teach them the religion of love. — Abhijit Naskar

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism. — Kai Bird

Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, wrote in 2006: International humanitarian law and the Rome statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) ... or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality). — Anonymous

As the crisis in Syria grows and the humanitarian tragedy becomes more clear, I appreciated Prime Minister Netanyahu's perspective on the changes and volatility in the region. — Rob Portman

everyone smiles in the same language. — Anonymous

We are glad to tie up with a humanitarian organization, which is being promoted by Prince Abdul Aziz. This partnership will greatly help in assisting needy renal-failure patients by supplying them equipment, medicines and other medical supplies, while encouraging and supporting scientific research. — Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi

In those days Great Britain was less wealthy than it is now, but it was also less complacent, and considerably less useless. It had a sense of humanitarian responsibility and a myth of its own importance that was quixotically true and universally accepted merely because it believed in it, and said so in a voice loud enough for foreigners to understand. It had not yet acquired the schoolboy habit of waiting for months for permission from Washington before it clambered out of its post-imperial bed, put on its boots, made a sugary cup of tea, and ventured through the door. — Louis De Bernieres