#humanit

Literary art's sudden, startling truth and beauty make us feel, in the most solitary part of us, that we are not alone, and that there are meanings that cannot be bought, sold or traded, that do not decay and die. This socially and economically worthless experience is called transcendence, and you cannot assign a paper, or a grade, or an academic rank, on that. Literature is too sacred to be taught. It needs only to be read. ↗

— Lee Siegel

#literature #art

I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves. ↗

— Tess Gerritsen

#humanity #evil

The one thing I have absolute faith in is mankind's capacity to make things worse. No matter how bad it gets, we're all happy to screw each other over. It's enough to make me wonder if we should have let the zombies win. ↗

— Mira Grant

#humanity #people-suck #faith

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#gratitude #humanity #inspirational #life #religion

You are to be pitied more than I, perhaps. I soar above all your innumerable miseries, partaking of the nature of the angels; for, as you have said, my place is not in your narrow sphere. You have the earth, I have boundless space. Enchained here below by the thousand bonds of your gross, material senses, your spirits cannot plunge into that limpid Ocean of the infinite, where, lost for a day upon your arid shores, my soul drinks deep. ↗

— Herculine Barbin

#humanity #intersex #lgbt #queerness #soul

Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn. ↗

— Henri Bergson

#genius #humanity #inertia #learn #which

Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair. ↗

— Edward Bond

#become #chair #get #humanity #product

A formally recognized equality does, however, accord the smaller nations a position which they should be able to use increasingly in the interest of humanity as a whole and in the service of the ideal. ↗

— Hjalmar Branting

#accord #does #equality #formally #however

In a world of democracies, the most deserving basis of national differences is that the different states of the world should represent a form of moral specialisation within humanity. ↗

— Roberto Unger

#democracies #deserving #differences #different #form

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#best #contemporary #contemporary life #dedicate #find