Mankind The Story Of All Of Us Quotes & Sayings

[T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world. — Daniel Quinn

Culture is the heritage of us all. some may be more interested than others in the treasures of the past, but no one can fail to take a pride in his country's participation in the story of mankind, as represented in carvings, sculpture, music, paintings and the other arts. And there is a personal commitment to this, for no man can really say he is alone: we are all joined through our identity, with the cultures which are part of the mainstream of life — Simon Kapwepwe

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones - indeed, we can do so in most of the world's known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place. — Andrew Solomon

On Christmas Eve," Joe said, "when you were reading 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids' to Matty, Corrie and I were sitting on the stairs listening."

Jo looked at Lilli, his face stern.

"The bit I always remember best in that story is the bit when the wolf goes to the miller and tells him to throw flour over his paws to disguise them." He began to quote from the story: "'The miller thought to himself, "The wolf is going to harm someone," and refused to do as he was told. Then the wolf said, "If you do not do as I tell you, I will kill you." The miller was afraid, and did as he was told, and threw the flour over the wolf's paws until they were white. This is what mankind is like.'"

He repeated the final sentence.

"'This is what mankind is like. — Peter Rushforth

God loves all people. — Lailah Gifty Akita

For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled, Where God might write anew the story of the World. — Edward Everett Hale

He gets away with it because he's strong.'
'This is the story of mankind.'
'I thought you were going to be a priest at one point.'
'Yes. But then I read the newspaper. — Christopher Buehlman

One sky, many lands.
One story, many books.
One truth, many interpretations.
One road, many paths.
One God, many religions. — Matshona Dhliwayo

To enlighten mankind and improve its morals is the only lesson which we offer in this story. In reading it, may the world discover how great is the peril which follows the footsteps of those who will stop at nothing to satisfy their desires. — Marquis De Sade

After a childhood reading fairy tales and myths, is it any wonder that when I began to write my own stories I included fairy tales? Fairy tales are storytelling at its most basic. They've been with mankind for as long as people have told stories to each other. Fairy tales speak to something intrinsic in humans - they touch our most primitive selves. How else to explain that the Cinderella story is told in nearly every society on earth? To think of fairy tales as merely stories for children is to ignore thousands of years when fairy tales were used to teach morality, to warn, and to entertain both children and adults. — Elizabeth Hoyt

The story of mankind is the nomadic search for many, many truths along harsh roads bordered with flesh and bones and the apparitions of truths long since eaten by birds; it is looking for truths to fill a grumbling stomach, and spitting them out like pebbles when they have lost their flavor. — Breyten Breytenbach

When we're in the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care? ... History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end. — James Robertson

If you look at the Bible as a whole, it's redemptive and beautiful, and it's God's love story to mankind. — Tom Shadyac

Children play at being great and wonderful people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a like dream once; everybody and nobody built up the dream bit by bit, and the ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires.
from a preface to
Gods and Fighting Men
by Lady Augusta Gregory — W.B.Yeats

Perhaps the story of the human race is best understood as a journey through particularly hazardous terrain, in the dark, in a not very well-serviced vehicle, with a succession of drivers of varying competence, in assorted states of inebreiation — Cyril Aydon

But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it. — Thomas Paine

Yes, Eden was beautiful- and if I had to squeeze through corporeal keyholes to crash it- so be it. (Hasn't it bothered you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was I doing there? 'Presume not the ways of God to scan,' you've been told in umpteen variations, 'the proper study of Mankind is Man.' Maybe so, but what, excuse me, was the Devil doing in Eden?) I took the forms of animals. I found I could. (That's generally my reason for doing something, by the way, because I find I can.) — Glen Duncan

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms - of life, of love, of knowledge - has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath. — Jasper Fforde

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

My father,' I replied, 'I am fond of action. I like to succour the afflicted, and make people happy. Command that there be built for me a tower, from whose top I can see the whole earth, and thus discover the places where my help would be of most avai1.'
'To do good, without ceasing, to mankind, a race at once flighty and ungrateful, is a more painful task than you imagine,' said Asfendarmod.
After saying these words, my father motioned to us to retire; and immediately I found myself in a tower, built on the summit of Mount Caf - a tower whose outer walls were lined with numberless mirrors that reflected, though hazily and as in a kind of dream, a thousand varied scenes then being enacted on the earth. Asfendarmod's power had indeed annihilated space, and brought me not only within sight of all the beings thus reflected in the mirrors, but also within sound of their voices and of the very words they uttered. ("The Story of The Peri Homaiouna") — William Beckford

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline. — Winston Churchill

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death. — Carlos Fuentes

But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, - so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, - that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful. — Joyce Carol Oates

The story of human nature is a fair romance. Am I to blame if it is not found elsewhere? I am trying to write the history of mankind. If my book is a romance, the fault lies with those who deprave mankind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt - and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. — John Steinbeck

It is a great evil to look upon mankind with too clear vision. You seem to be living among wild beasts, and you become a wild beast yourself. (""The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah") — William Beckford

The life of the hero of the tale is, at the outset, overshadowed by bitter and hopeless struggles; one doubts that the little swineherd will ever be able to vanquish the awful Dragon with the twelve heads. And yet, ... truth and courage prevail and the youngest and most neglected son of the family, of the nation, of mankind, chops off all twelve heads of the Dragon, to the delight of our anxious hearts. This exultant victory, towards which the hero of the tale always strives, is the hope and trust of the peasantry and of all oppressed peoples. This hope helps them bear the burden of their destiny. — Gyula Illyes

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down - or up, I suppose - replacing other people in the process. — Alexander McCall Smith

Weak, feeble and foolish as it may seem to people, the simple story of the Cross is enough for all mankind in every part of the globe. — J.C. Ryle

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect. — Carl Sandburg

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest. — Walter Benjamin

From The Ghost Wars- on the concept of the Torah as ancient science fiction. "Take the story of the fall of the tower of Babel. Let's say this represents not an act of God, nor a metaphor for this planet's diverse linguistic heritage; but a catastrophic act of terrorism by the Divisionists to sever mankind from the neural net. The internet in this situation becomes mankind's attempt to build a physical replacement for a natural ability long lost. Think of it as a wooden leg or a pacemaker. — Cole J. Davis

I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind. — John Steinbeck

People who take books on sex to bed become frigid. You get self-conscious. You can't think a story. You can't think, "I shall do a story to improve mankind." Well, it's nonsense. All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether or not you love a girl or you love a boy, forget it. You don't. A story is the same way. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it. — Ray Bradbury

The story we write today will support the next generation. — Lailah Gifty Akita