World Humanitarian Day Quotes

On World Humanitarian Day 2014, thanks to ALL aid workers who carry or have carried out lifesaving work. Salute to our champions ~ Widad Akreyi

The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind. ~ Norman Borlaug

I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader. But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat to humanitarian security. ~ Jonathan Powell

After the war in Afghanistan, Anna [Wintour, editor of Vogue], deciding to save the world one hair-roller at a time, thought the best way to help the women in this beleaguered country was to start a small beauty school in Kabul, where aid workers could get their roots done. Vanity Fair, edited by Bush-basher Graydon Carter, cheered her great humanitarian effort. ~ Myrna Blyth

The day I stay silent in the face of bigotry and discrimination, will be the day the sun turns purple and the statue of liberty drops her torch. ~ Abhijit Naskar

At times we feel outnumbered in our attempts to improve the world - to brighten and beautify, to preserve and heal and do what's best for humanity. Selfless efforts can start to feel beleaguering, discouraging, even pointless with so little support. It is at these times I remind myself that I would rather be the last Good Samaritan standing than to join the ranks of selfish multitudes creating misery. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Science is the most influential tool of progress in the world, not one among many, but most, yet no scientist had tried to use it as a primary tool for harmony. And I desired to accomplish precisely that. I didn't want to popularize science, for there were and are already tons of scientists doing it. I wanted to use science in a way that would have direct humanitarian consequences in interhuman relationships. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.
We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748) ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

She seemed to have it all. Humanitarian success on the world stage, contentment and love in her private life. As she lazed on the deck of the Jonikal, for once the barometer of her heart was set fair. By some curious alchemy the public sensed this transformation, that this lonely, vulnerable and rudderless vessel had at last found a comforting anchor in life, a safe harbor to run to from the perils of the deep.
For a few short days she enjoyed that state of grace in a stormy existence. Then the heavens cracked open--and claimed her. ~ Andrew Morton

Most humans think - "we are living our life, the world is not our business." And that's precisely where not only everything gets messed up, but more importantly, that's where humanity loses the right to be called human, for being human requires possessing a sense of responsibility towards the society we live in, without which we might as well be living in the jungle with our fellow animals. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A smile can do more good than all the doctrines in the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

If I give you two possible worlds to choose from, in which you would like your children and grandchildren to live, which one would you choose - a world filled with hatred and discrimination, or a world where the humans care about their fellow humans beyond the petty little man-made labels of religion, race, nationality, intellect, gender etc.!

We do not need to make efforts and be kind in order to keep Nature running, she can do that quite well and far better than us herself, in fact, it'd benefit Nature, if suddenly the humans were to disappear. It is us who need Nature in order to exist, not the other way around.

We must stand on the side of kindness, goodness, compassion and conscience, not to keep the processes in Nature functioning, but because if we don't, the environment that we would be giving our future generations, would be no different than the violent and lethal environment of the wild. Hence, our kindness would make no difference to Nature whatsoever, rather it would simply be a selfish yet humanely necessary act on our part, that we must carry out to create a humane environment for the human species.

Upon the kindness of us humans, the fate of humanity is predicated, not the fate of Nature. We are born in a world filled with hatred and discrimination, hence it is our existential responsibility as sentient and conscientious beings to contribute in the elimination of such discrimination and hatred. Kindness of ours in our daily wal ~ Abhijit Naskar

Burn so bright that the world comes to life. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The only clear expression of intellectual dissent from hydraulic despotism occurred in the southern half of the coastal lands of the eastern Mediterranean, called variously Canaan, Palestine, Israel, Judah, and today, Israel again. Here and in a satellite Jewish colony in Iraq, between 800 and 500 B.C., visionaries ("the Prophets") -- namely Amos, Ezekiel, Isaiah (at least two different writers writing under this name), and Jeremiah -- wrote elegant poems calling for social justice in the world and a freer, more open and humanitarian society. ~ Norman F. Cantor

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

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service. ~ Irving Babbitt

Yesterday I was stupid, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am more stupid, so I am changing the world. And tomorrow there will be a hundred more stupid like me, for this stupidity for changing the world can never accept any excuse for inaction, even if that excuse happens to be a most rational reason. ~ Abhijit Naskar

As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had been going on since the end of the Second World War, which was surely World War Three. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In this world you'll receive nothing without paying a price and the price of harmony is sacrifice. ~ Abhijit Naskar

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

I want to keep working, I want to keep doing my humanitarian stuff around the world, shining light on different places that have problems. Keep making movies, make people laugh. ~ Chris Tucker

To them, violence, power, cruelty, were the supreme capacities of men who had definitely lost their place in the universe and were much too proud to long for a power theory that would safely bring them back and reintegrate them into the world. They were satisfied with blind partisanship in anything that respectable society had banned, regardless of theory or content, and they elevated cruelty to a major virtue because it contradicted society's humanitarian and liberal hypocrisy. ~ Hannah Arendt

Fighting fire with fire will burn the whole world to ashes. ~ Abhijit Naskar

(While accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award) I've been thinking about why you have to get famous to get an award for helping other people ... If your name is John Doe, and you work night and day doing things for your helpless neighbors, what you get for your effort is tired. So, Mr. and Mrs. Doe, and all of you who give of yourselves, to those who carry too big a burden to make it on their own, I want you to reach out and take your share of this ... Because if I have earned it, so too have you. ~ Frank Sinatra

It's just how it is. Not everybody was born to be inherently 'good'. The world is going to be filled with different characters, different flavours, different levels of respectability and whatnot, and Louis just so happens to be on the lower ranks. He's not good, he's not brave, and he's not out to save anyone except himself. Even fairytales have their villains - it's a part of life. And it's always been that way. Louis' always been a bit harsher around the edges. He certainly isn't going to be winning any "Humanitarian of the Year" awards, that's for sure. And he doesn't mind it so much, being thoroughly unaffected by anything and everything and totally removed from his peers and their very trivial lives. Because he's not like the rest of them. That's the thing. They're all the fucking same. With their money and their uppity attitudes and twattiness and their preconceived notions and recycled sentences that disappear as quickly as they come. The same. ~ Velvetoscar

In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

There is no use complaining about the hidden brain, or wishing it away. The telescope effect in our moral judgment is part of our nature. There is nothing we can do about it. But there is something we can do about our actions. We can choose to allow our actions to be guided by reason rather than instinct, choose to set up national and international institutions that respond instantly to humanitarian crises, rather than wait for our heartstrings to be pulled by stories of individual tragedy. If we rely on our moral telescopes, there will be people in a hundred years who ask how the world could have sat on its hands through so many genocides in the twenty-first century. Making ~ Shankar Vedantam

It is interesting that for Plato, and for most Platonists, an altruistic individualism cannot exist. According to Plato, the only alternative to collectivism is egoism; he simply identifies all altruism with collectivism, and all individualism with egoism. This is not a matter of terminology, of mere words, for instead of four possibilities, Plato recognized only two. This has created considerable confusion in speculation on ehtical matters, even down to our own day.

Plato's identification of individualism with egoism furnishes him with a powerful weapon for his defence of collectivism as well as for his attack upon individualism. In defending collectivism, he can appeal to our humanitarian feeling of unselfishness; in his attack, he can brand all individualists as selfish, as incapable of devotion to anything but themselves. This attack, although aimed by Plato against individualism in our sense, i.e. against the rights of human individuals, reaches of course only a very different target, egoism. But this difference is constantly ignored by Plato and by most Platonists...

Individualism was part of the old intuitive idea of justice. That justice is not, as Plato would have it, the health and harmony of the state, but rather a certain way of treating individuals, is emphasized by Aristotle, when he says, 'justice is something that pertains to persons. ~ Karl Popper

To hell with the society, I have all the comfort - to hell with nation, I have all the security - to hell with my neighbors, I have all the prosperity - to hell with the world, I have all the luxury. I am pain-stricken to say, such is the mentality of the majority of the human population, and that's why we still haven't succeeded in constructing a truly civilized and safe society on this planet. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Disinfect the world my friend – disinfect it with your thinking – disinfect it with your actions – disinfect it with your existence. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Being Jewish did not compromise the humanitarian and universalist ideals of my close relatives who, having experienced persecution close hand, were more concerned with bringing about peace, justice and equality in the world than in trying to cut out a niche where they could continue an insular - Jewish - fantasy. ~ Daniel Waterman

I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If we don't take responsibility of what happens to our society, then no amount of Independence can improve human condition. ~ Abhijit Naskar

No god is coming to save you - no messiah is coming to save you - all the gods and all the messiahs that can save our world are already here - they are us - each one of us - so, open your eyes o mighty lords of time, and cleanse this world of all barbarian impurities, with the force of your bold, brave and humane actions. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The humanitarian developers behind World of Warcraft have also discovered a way to bribe gamers into turning off their computers and going outside. If you log off for a few days, your character will be more 'rested' when you resume playing, a mode that temporarily speeds up your leveling. ~ Clive Thompson

I belong to America, as much as I belong to Russia - I belong to England, as much as I belong to France - I belong to Bulgaria, as much as I belong to Turkey - I belong to India, as much as I belong to Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on. I belong to every nation on this planet. Every country is my country - every culture is my culture - every history is my history. One who sacrifices the self in the service of others, no longer sees any separation whatsoever between the self and the rest of the world - it all becomes one. ~ Abhijit Naskar

My dad's one of my biggest heroes. I also think Paul Newman's an inspiration. I know a lot of people say that, but I love that he's a great role model and a humanitarian. I admire people who don't necessarily want to change the world, but try to make it a better environment. ~ Alex Pettyfer

Tolerating discrimination is worse than committing discrimination, for toleration of discrimination is a sign of approval and implicit advocacy for discrimination. So, speak up - speak up for acceptance, speak up for brotherhood, speak up for unification, speak up for a diverse world and a united world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

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