Humaneness Quotes

Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy,
the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and
sometimes
Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou known Life? ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate.Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the "Principe," has determined the development of European history ever since. ~ Stefan Zweig

Rome has betrayed itself. It knew the truth and chose violence, it knew humaneness and it chose tyranny. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt

The fundamental Law of The Universe states that all human beings are fundamentally the same and therefore have an equal right to live in equality. ~ Anthony Pan

The purity of unison singing, unaffected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity, unspoiled by the attempt to give musical art an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing. This, ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The difference between a dictator and a true leader, is in intention. Given enough resources anybody can manipulate the minds of the masses and become their chosen authority, for the masses rarely look past the veil of the candidate's charm. And this is more evident today than ever, as a psychologically unfit misogynistic bully has swayed his way into the oval office with nothing but charm and charisma. So, basically we live in a society where a bully can become the authority of a great nation, the history of which is filled with true leaders who were the forerunners of humanitarian glory and real progress - these leaders were not simply the leaders of a country, or a party, but they were and still remain in the heart of the civilized humans as the leaders of humanity. They were the torch-bearers of egalitarianism and their light spread across the globe and touched countless lives with the warmth of humaneness. They lived among the masses but they didn't let the prejudices of the masses become their own, let alone infect the masses with more prejudices, unlike today's so-called leadership in America. They made America truly a great nation, by turning it into a symbol of liberty and acceptance, and today that very greatness is at stake, as the primitive evils of prejudices and discriminations have once again begun to creep into its backbone, through the words and actions of its very so-called leader. This is not a threat to democracy, for democracy itself at our current evolut ~ Abhijit Naskar

Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty. ~ Henry Stephens Salt

The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I've come to read and hear many unlikely things about the times when people lived in freedom, i.e., the unorganized savage state. But the most unlikely thing, it seems to me, is this: how could the olden day governmental power - primitive though it was - have allowed people to live without anything like our Table, without the scheduled walks, without the precise regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever it occurred to them? Various historians even say that, apparently, in those times, light burned in the streets all night long, and all night long, people rode and walked the streets. This I just cannot comprehend in any way. Their faculties of reason may not have been developed, but they must have understood more broadly that living like that amounted to mass murder - literally - only it was committed slowly, day after day. The State (humaneness) forbade killing to death any one person but didn't forbid the half-killing of millions. To kill a man, that is, to decrease the sum of a human life span by fifty years - this was criminal. But decreasing the sum of many humans' lives by fifty million years - this was not criminal. Isn't that funny? ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

..cruelty to animals will get you punished but cruelty to humans will get you promotion. ~ Ali Smith

If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like? ~ Confucius

Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional ... If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When imagination fails, compassion and humaneness dwindle and atrophy along with it. Unleavened by imagination, the variety and richness of life turn into flat abstractions; people become objects to be manipulated
with the social consequences we know all too well. ~ Lloyd Alexander

When you want to help people, you don't need no language – it'll all be written on your face. ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

The southern German has the imagination and emotionality to subscribe to a fanatic ideology, but he is ordinarily inhibited from excesses by his natural humaneness. The Prussian does not have the imagination to conceive in terms of abstract racial and political theories, but when he is told to do something, he does it. ~ Arthur Seyss-Inquart

The unkindest thing you can do to a human is to tarnish their reputation in front of others just to make yourself look good. ~ Sijdah Hussain

The world needs not new governments - the world needs not new parties - the world needs not new dictators masquerading as leaders or entrepreneurs - what the world needs is thought, punned in the flames of reason, courage and humaneness. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Gods tender mercies are over all His creatures. ~ Psalm 145 9