What Is It To Be Human Quotes

Governments never do any great good things from mere principle, from mere love of justice ... You expect too much of human nature when you expect that.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Human beings like variety, and they also like partnership . . . these are scientific values we can point to.

Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word "human."

All political and religious systems have their root and their strength in the innate conservatism of the human mind, and its intense fear of autonomy.

It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes.

Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.

How frail the human heart must be - a mirrored pool of thought.

It is a characteristic of the human mind to hate the man one has injured.

We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event.

We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.

The human heart is the first home of democracy.

We're animals, I think we forget that. I think there is an ancient archetypal memory that still exists within us. If we deny that, what is the cost? So I do think it's what binds us as human beings.

I don't think of myself as an American; I see myself as a human being.

I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.

The diamond which shines in the Saviour's crown shall burn in unquenched beauty at last on the forehead of every human soul.

Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.

The whole sum and substance of human history may be reduced to this maxim: that when man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss.

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it

Habit is the deepest law of human nature

The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement.

Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.

The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.

The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we [human beings] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles.

When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

It is only within a free society that the crucial moral features of human life can be protected and preserved

I would say that I think the film [I am love] is absolutely about nature, it recommends human nature. You don't need to recommend change, that's inevitable, it's the only reliable thing we have.

Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is.

I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings

It begins here, and has no end, and no earthly power can coerce it; and it is to be found in the human heart.

Bernie Sanders is all about being humane and loving to each other.

The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.

Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.

The most powerful force in the human psyche is people's need for their words and actions to stay consistent with their IDENTITY - how we define ourselves.

Our top priority is to relieve suffering of human beings.

There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.

The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market.

Which religion gives the greatest joy to God? That which inspires human beings to practice Ahimsa and compassion to all creatures.

The impact of space activities is nothing less than the galvanizing of hope and imagination for human life continuum into a future of infinite possibility.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.