Humanity

"There is something deeply awe-inspiring about the sight of any living creatures in incomputable numbers; it stirs, perhaps, some atavistic chord whose note belongs more properly to the distant days when we were a true part of the animal ecology; when the sight of another species in unthinkable hosts brought fears or hopes no longer applicable."

"I love humanity, which has been a constant delight to me during all my seventy-seven years of life; and I love flowers, trees, animals, and all the works of Nature as they pass before us in time and space. What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe; and grains of enormously increased productiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and better nourishment, a veritable storehouse of perfect food—new food for all the world's untold millions for all time to come."

"The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart, not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!"

"In most cases, one can learn at least as much about the writer and the culture of his era from such descriptions as one can about the animals. Literature about animals is relatively less self-conscious, and, for that reason, more revealing than writing directly about human beings. We are less defensive, so egotism and paranoia, while present often enough, are less elaborately concealed. Animals always figure very prominently in the symbols that express human identity, from heraldic crests to the names of sports teams."

"Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it’s our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is."

"The death of a dog may not by some be regarded as a tragedy, but some dogs are more worthy than some men, and can be more justly mourned."

"And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."

"I write to express my love for the humanity."

"We are born for the happiness. We are living for the happiness. To be happy we have to be morally free. To be morally free we have to treat the humanity with uncompromising sincerity."

"Help humanity to help yourself. Love humanity to love yourself."

"Without women, humanity will be history."

"Women are the flower in the garden of humanity."

"I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be better when you die,” the people of my grandma’s generation said as they worked themselves to death. “God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong,” some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, “The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity."

"The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings."

"How can you measure progress if you don't know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the "market" put a price on things - food, clothes, electricity, running water - when it doesn't take into account the REAL cost of production?"

"All we’ve got left to protect here is a system that’s set up to promote the meanest possibilities in human nature and make them look good."

"Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people."

"Artist is not human, but humanity."

"I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness."