Humanity Central Quotes & Sayings

That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done-these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence-because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity. — E.F. Schumacher

I believe tha t the two most important focal points for all of humanity in the twenty-first century are the Earth and the human brain. The Earth's health is the only standard that is all-encompassing enough to overcome the ethnic, cultural, religious, and national tensions that are rending the world asunder. Only the Earth can become the central azis around twhich world peace can be spun, for no religion is more compelling, no single nation larger, and no peoples older than the Earth herself — Ilchi Lee

With no blame there's no shame. A human society can't exist without shame. Shame is like handedness or walking upright. It's a central human attribute. In fact, it's the first human quality ever recorded.'
'Where?'
'Genesis, Chapter Three. The covering of nakedness. The acquisition of shame was the first consequence of consciousness, of the speciating moment. Take shame from me and you are calling me pre-human. — Sebastian Faulks

She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of humanity from jealousy - and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and nothing remains for emancipation when she can. — H.G.Wells

It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get
the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke
that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens ... and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch. — David Foster Wallace

All over the world, we're finding out that, you know, whether it's Egypt or Syria or Central America, what satellites are showing is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of previously unknown settlements all over the world, and what archaeology does, it helps us to understand this common humanity that we have. — Sarah Parcak

One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it's one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It's central to our humanity. — Rob Bell

Those retrospectively blessed dozen years lasted from the chilly, fevered Central European night of November 9th, 1989 to that bright morning on the Eastern Seaboard of American of September 11th, 2001. One event symbolized the lifted threat of a worldwide nuclear holocaust,
something which had been hanging over humanity for nearly forty years, and so ended an age of idiocy. The other ushered in a new one. — Iain Banks

By simplifying our lives, we rediscover our child-like stalk of innocents that reconnects us with the central resin of our innate humanity that knows truth and goodness. To see the world through a lens of youthful rapture is to see life for what it can be and to see for ourselves what we wish to become. In this beam of newly discovered ecstasy for life, we realize the splendor of love, life, and the unbounded beauty of the natural world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding. — Roger D. Woodard

As you build your lives, for yourselves and others, you will come to rest upon certain principles. Central to my life has been a verse in the Holy Quran which addresses itself to the whole of humanity. It says: 'Oh Mankind, fear your Lord, who created you of a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair of them scattered abroad many men and women'. I know of no more beautiful expression about the unity of our human race - born indeed from a single soul. — Aga Khan

The central message of the Bible is about God redeeming a humanity that is in trouble and suffering. — John Townsend

From the Crusades to the Holocaust to the Cold War to the current "clash of civilizations," the demonization of "the other" has played a central and nefarious role in justifying the most evil human enterprises. Instead of finding common ground with those of different beliefs, backgrounds, and cultures than ourselves, we crow these days about our American "exceptionalism" and seek to impose our values on those who reject them. This is the pathway to permanent war - a path that has led to enormous wealth and power for the few, and deepening misery for the rest of humanity. — Arsalan Iftikhar

I think that prog rock is the science fiction of music. Science fiction speculates on what the future might be and look like and how we'll get there, and yet there's always a central theme of humanity, or there should be. Progressive rock has the same concept of exploration into the parts of the music world that hasn't been explored. — William Shatner

Improving upon nature is the very essence of plant breeding, and so it goes to the heart of one of the central debates of the human condition: the relationship between humanity and nature and the degree to which the human race has a right (or indeed a responsibility) to change plant life for its own ends. — Noel Kingsbury

The central idea of the present book is very simple. It is that education is not primarily about the acquisition of information. It is not even about the acquisition of 'skills' in the conventional sense, to equip us for particular roles in society. It is about how we become more human (and therefore more free, in the truest sense of that word). This is a broader and a deeper question, but no less practical. Too often we have not been educating our humanity. We have been educating ourselves for doing rather than for being. — Stratford Caldecott

This is another lesson from the transformative movements of the past: all of them understood that the process of shifting cultural values - though somewhat ephemeral and difficult to quantify - was central to their work. And so they dreamed in public, showed humanity a better version of itself, modeled different values in their own behavior, and in the process liberated the political imagination and rapidly altered the sense of what was possible. — Naomi Klein

We could decide simply to remain absorbed in the mysterious, unformed, free-play of reality. This would be the choice of the mystic who seeks to extinguish himself in God or Nirvana - analogous perhaps to the tendency among artists to obliterate themselves with alcohol or opiates. But if we value our participation in a shared reality in which it makes sense to make sense, then such self-abnegation would deny a central element of our humanity: the need to speak and act, to share our experience with others. — Stephen Batchelor

The desire to engineer humanity is a sign of a mind warped by megalomania and lust for power. — A.E. Samaan

Love is the supreme form of communication. In the hierarchy of needs, love stands as the supreme developing agent of the humanity of the person. As such, the teaching of love should be the central core of all early childhood curriculum with all other subjects growing naturally out of such teaching. — Ashley Montagu

The center of the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Biodiversity, there's an exhibit embedded in the floor. The exhibit is arranged around a central plaque that notes there have been five major extinction events since complex animals evolved, over five hundred million years ago. According to the plaque, "Global climate change and other causes, probably including collisions between earth and extraterrestrial objects," were responsible for these events. It goes on to observe: "Right now we are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, this time caused solely by humanity's transformation of the ecological landscape. — Elizabeth Kolbert

The greatest is to have a tendency to friendship; this is expressed in the form of tolerance and forgiveness, in the form of service and trust. In whatever form he may express it this is the central theme: the constant desire to prove one's love for humanity, to be the friend of all. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. — David Foster Wallace

However, for Hardy the possibility of poetry's traditional function of transcendence remains, but in a more limited form. In Hardy's work the poet transcends himself towards humanity, affirming the central values of loving-kindness and fellowship. — Geoffrey Harvey

At the heart of the WTO is an assault on everything left standing in the commons, in the public realm. Everything is now for sale. Even those areas of life that we once considered sacred like health and education, food and water and air and seeds and genes and a heritage. It is all now for sale. Economic freedom - not democracy, and not ecological stewardship - is the defining metaphor of the WTO and its central goal is humanity's mastery of the natural world through its total commodification. — Maude Barlow

The operative condition on this particular planet, the central mode which human beings follow, is fear. We are taught to fear. — Frederick Lenz

I have known many survivors for whom the holocaust is the central them of their lives. They have no other. I have tried to live with tolerance and forgiveness as the theme of my life.

God have us the power to be good or evil. This is our choice. Because some pick evil, we must work together to recognize and stop it. But while we survivors may lead the change, we cannot do this alone. It must be the goal of all people. If we will join in this goal, then there is hope for humanity. — Andrea Warren

By 2050, seven out of ten people will live in cities, which will account for six billion people living in urban areas. That phenomenon is central to all the challenges humanity faces. If there is an issue to be addressed, then it is certainly happening in cities and therefore must be considered on an urban scale. — Eduardo Paes

Some [people] think that there is a central organization responsible for all the institutions they wrongly think affiliated with me. They ignore the zeal of many to serve humanity and to gain God's good pleasure in doing so. They ignore people's generosity. Such misunderstandings may lead others to have suspicions about the financial resources of the schools. — Fethullah Gulen

Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness. — Laurie Garrett