This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Is there anyone who exerts himself even for a single day to achieve humanity? I have not see any who had not the strength to achieve it." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose." - Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms ins not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"The pact of Munich was a more fell blow to humanity than the atom bomb at Hiroshima. Suffocation of human freedom among a once free people, however quietly and peacefully accomplished, is more far-reaching in its implications and its effects on their future than the destruction of their homes, industrial centers and transportation facilities. Out of rubble heaps, willing hands can rebuild a better city; but out of freedom lost can stem only generations of hate and bitter struggle and brutal oppression." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood." - Edward Gibbon
"War in its fairest form implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice." - Edward Gibbon
"The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant." - Edward Gibbon
"The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the promise but at least the possibility of success. We should not be misled by promises. Humanity in all its history has repeatedly escaped disaster by a hair’s breadth. Total security has never been available to anyone. To expect it is unrealistic; to imagine that it can exist is to invite disaster." - Edward Teller
"All success consists in this: you are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it." - Epicurus NULL
"It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor." - Eric Hoffer
"A feeling of utter worthlessness levels a man's attitude toward his fellow beings. He views the whole of humanity as being of one kind. He will despise equally those who love him and those who hate him, those who are noble and those who are mean, those who are compassionate and those who are cruel. It is as if the feeling of worthlessness cuts one off from the rest of mankind. One sees humanity as a foreign species." - Eric Hoffer
"Wisdom consists in the highest use of the intellect for the discernment of the largest moral interest of humanity. It is the most perfect willingness to do the right combined with the utmost attainable knowledge of what is right… Wisdom consists in working for the better from the love of the best." - Felix Adler
"There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization." - Felix Adler
"It is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity." - Francis Bacon
"Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us." - Francis Bacon
"Of all the tyrannies which have usurped power over humanity, few have been able to enslave the mind and body as imperiously as drug addiction." - Freda Adler
"I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity." - Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
"If humanity is to have a hopeful future, there is no escape from the preeminent involvement and responsibility of the single human soul, in all its loneliness and frailty." - George F. Kennan
"After all there is but one race - humanity." - George Moore, fully George Augustus Moore
"For every civilization or every period of history it is true today: show me what kind of god you have and I will tell you what kind of humanity you possess." - Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
"If we can listen we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Our charitable institutions are an insult to humanity. A charity which dispenses the crumbs that fall from its overloaded tables, which are left after its feasts." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity." - Henry James
"Children should be led to make their own investigations and to draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible and induced to discover as much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction… If the subjects be put before him in right order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will surmount his successive difficulties with but little assistance." - Herbert Spencer
"Each child’s mind [should go] through a process like that which the mind of humanity at large has gone through. The truths of number, of form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to let him learn them as the race learned them." - Herbert Spencer
"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." - Horace Mann
"Act only on that maxim [intention] whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. Always act so as to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an end in itself, never merely as a means. Act always as if to bring about, and as a member of, a Kingdom of Ends [that is, an ideal community in which everyone is always moral]." - Immanuel Kant
"So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in ever case as an end withal, never as a means only." - Immanuel Kant
"That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can never be used merely as a means by any (not even by God) without being at the same time an end also himself, that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement with which alone can anything be termed holy. For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself." - Immanuel Kant
"There is no likeness or proportion between life, however painful, and death; and therefore there is no equality between the crime of murder and the retaliation of it but what is judicially accomplished by the execution of the criminal. His death, however, must be kept free from all maltreatment that would make the humanity suffering in his person loathsome or abominable." - Immanuel Kant
"Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only." - Immanuel Kant
"So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only." - Immanuel Kant
"Literature is the memory of humanity." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"Humanity cannot be measured by what it is; only by what it is trying to become." - John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi
"Every temptation that is resisted, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sinful thought that is repressed, every bitter word that is withheld,, adds its little item to the impetus of that great movement which is bearing humanity onward toward a richer life and higher character." - John Fiske
"All real joy and power of progress... depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain." - John Ruskin
"All real joy and power of progress in humanity depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain." - John Ruskin
"All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience." - John Stuart Mill
"Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever." - Joseph Addison
"Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they live under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence and humanity." - Joseph Addison
"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable." - Joseph Addison
"Politeness is the flower of humanity." - Joseph Joubert
"The will of humanity cannot change the will of God." - Kahlil Gibran
"Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course." - Kahlil Gibran
"They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty." - Kahlil Gibran
"Anti-Semitism in any form is a barbaric insult to our culture and our civilization, which have been moulded by Christianity, and as a breakdown of Christian values, which have become confused and lacking in humanity." - Karl Barth