We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.
Ben Okri Quote | description of humanity
Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?
Friedrich Nietzsche – Humanity, Blunder
It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.
Seneca – Denial of justice
In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God’s mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger to us
Jimmy Carter – inhumanity of war
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the best of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
George Eliot – Feeling, Life, Vision
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
Voltaire – Society, Humanity
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.
Samuel Johnson – Treason, Humanity
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
Goethe – Humanity, Freedom
Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day
Benjamin Franklin – Human Felicity
Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
George Bernard Shaw – Humanity, Mankind
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
George Bernard Shaw – Humanity
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
Winston Churchill – Humanity
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.
Charles Dickens – Nature, Humanity
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens – Humanity
The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.
