This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual." - Honoré de Balzac
"Passion is universal humanity. With it religion, history, romance and art would be useless." - Honoré de Balzac
"Life itself is the expression of evolution... Everything that exists is merely matter in motion. In the same way, perfection is always a temporary relative motion. Humanity is relative... We are at such a low expression of consciousness that we have not yet seriously studied ourselves... Development is circular... Everything is constantly moving at higher, faster, more refined, complex levels of being... We will be here as quantitative motion until we reach a state of motion that is qualitative, revolutionary. Then we will be somewhere else!" - Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones
"From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"If civilization has profoundly modified man, it is by accumulating in his social surroundings, as in a reservoir, the habits and knowledge which society pours into the individual at each new generation. Scratch the surface, abolish everything we owe to an education which is perpetual and unceasing, and you find in the depth of our nature primitive humanity, or something very near it." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity." - Georg Brandes, fully Georg Morris Cohen Brandes
"All the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of humanity." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Most of the troubles of humanity are imaginary and should be laughed out of court. It is folly to cross a bridge until you come to it, or to bid the Devil good-morning until you meet him - perfect folly. All is well until the stroke falls, and even then, nine times out of ten, it is not so bad as anticipated. A wise man is the confirmed optimist." - Andrew Carnegie
"Prosperity cannot be divorced from humanity." - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
"With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
"The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is man’s last desperate stand at superintendency." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
"This which marks the difference between bestiality and humanity, between culture and merely physical nature, is because man remembers, preserving and recording his experiences." - John Dewey
"In abstract love of humanity one almost always loves oneself." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity form the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, “Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!”" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment; the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier. The ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity, not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television, but a real expansion of our spirit." - Freeman John Dyson
"It is a nationalism whose aim is not power but dignity and health. If we did not have to live among intolerant, narrow-minded and violent people, I should be the first to throw over all nationalism in favor of universal humanity." - Albert Einstein
"In the book of nature, where every emotional, mental and spiritual quality of humanity may find its correspondence and illustrations, flowers represent good affections. As the flower precedes the fruit, and gives notice of its coming, so good thoughts, affections and intentions precede and give promise of deeds in love to others." - Homer Everett
"Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward." - Heinrich Heine
"The Bible is the great medicine chest of humanity." - Heinrich Heine
"The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms." - Johann Gottfried von Herder
"Wherever the right of property clashes with a duty toward humanity, the former has not credentials that are entitled to consideration." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
"The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life." - Firuz Kazemzadeh
"If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"I know that there is one God in heaven, the Father of all humanity, and heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky, which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in God, and unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom. Whatever it is broken, wherever a shadow is cast upon the sunny rays of the sun of liberty, there is always danger of free principles everywhere in the world." - Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva
"Half the noblest passages in poetry are truisms; but these truism are the great truths of humanity; and he is the true poet who draws them from their fountains in elemental purity, and gives us a drink." - Letitia Elizabeth Landon
"Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
"The march of Providence is so slow and our desires to impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our mean of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing ways, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope." - Robert Full
"The friend of humanity cannot recognize a distinction between what is political and what is not. There is nothing that is not political." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time." - Guglielmo Marconi
"The religion of humanity is love." - Guiseppe Mazzini
"The worst part about prostitution is that you’re obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That’s the worst part of it: that what you’re selling is your human dignity. Not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement - in becoming a bought person." - Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
"The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live [to] with a purpose." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities. But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"Just as education without humanity is the most dangerous thing in the world, so education in love, human understanding and cooperation is the greatest hope of the world." - Joy Elmer Morgan
"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity." - M. P. Moussorgsky, fully Modest Petrowitsch Mussorgski
"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity." - Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
"Genetic mutation is not, it would seem, due to chance, but directed in some way, perhaps toward a spiritual regeneration of humanity - a bridge, as it were, between a lower, and a higher level of consciousness." - Louis Pauwels
"I am a human being; no part of humanity do I consider foreign to me." - Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL
"Amid the ruins which surround me I shall dare to say that revolutions are not what I most fear for coming generations?... It is believed by some that modern society will be always changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"The power of the majority... is not unlimited. Above it in the moral world are humanity, justice, and reason; and in the political world, vested rights." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"The majority of those who flatter themselves on their knowledge of the human heart do not separate their boasted insight from their unfavorable feeling about humanity... Nothing indeed imparts a psychological air so much as an habitual attitude of depreciation." - Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
"Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy." - Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
"There is no such thing as an average man. Each one of us is a unique individual. Each one of us expresses his humanity and his divinity in some distinctly different way. The beauty and the bloom of each human soul is a thing apart - a separate holy miracle under God, never once repeated throughout all the millenniums of time." - Lane Weston