Humanism Quotes

1. "That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life"
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

2. "If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it."
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

3. "In some socialist states well-performed work is rewarded with moral stimulants instead of material ones. However, the moral stimulants cannot be explained by materialistic philosophy. It is the same case with the appeals for humanism, justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and so forth, which are all of religious origin. Certainly, everybody has the right to live as he thinks best, including the right not to be consistent with his own pattern. Still, to understand the world correctly, it is important to know the true origin of meaning and of the ideas ruling the world."
Author: Alija Izetbegovic

4. "Humanism is the affirmation of man as a free and responsible being. Nothing degrades man more than the proclamation of irresponsibility. Man is responsible, animals and things are not."
Author: Alija Izetbegovic

5. "Hunting Down the Secular Humanists" "...What makes them so dangerous is that Secular Humanists look just like you and me. Some of them could be your best friends without you knowing that they are Humanists. They could come into your house, play with your children, eat your food and even watch football with you on television, and you'd never know they have read Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, and Huckleberry Finn....No one is safe until Congress sets up an Anti-Secular Humanism Committee to get at the rot. Witnesses have to be called, and they have to name names."
Author: Art Buchwald

6. "To become truly human,one has to try an release oneself from the shackles of race,religion and nationality.The quantum of humanism one acquires is inevitably filtered when one limits oneself."-Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad(Kant Lecture,20090)"
Author: Ashoka Prasad

7. "I don't think the biggest threat to our theology is humanism or the host of world religions. Our biggest threat is cut-and-paste Christianity. If man places his faith in a god he has recreated in his own image, has he placed his faith in God at all? And if not, how can such a man be saved?"
Author: Beth Moore

8. "In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools, and its becoming almost generally true, it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies, pragmatism and humanism were the early ones, and they branched out into a number of other philosophies which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face."
Author: Boyd K. Packer

9. "Whatever else humanism is, it is emphatically not a movement towards freedom and expansion. It is the impulse of men who feel themselves simple, rustic, and immature, towards sophistication, urbanity, and ripeness. In a word, it is the most complete opposite we can find to the Romantic desire for the primitive and the spontaneous."
Author: C.S. Lewis

10. "For my money, noir boils down to bleak humanism – or, to put it more plainly: shit options, bad decisions, and direconsequences. The difference between Greek tragedy and noir ain't the height of the fall, but the reason: those who fall in Greek tragedy do so because they're destined to; those who fall in noir choose to their damn selves.In short, free will's a bitch.But regardless of whose definition you go with, you'll notice something's lacking: namely, any mention of genre. That's because for as much as noir's assumed to be a subset of crime fiction, it's more vibe than subgenre. And, as many an enterprising modern writer seems intent on proving, that vibe is one that plays just as well with fantasy and science fiction as it does with crime."
Author: Chris F. Holm

11. "For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity."
Author: Christopher Dawson

12. "Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology."
Author: Christopher Dawson

13. "Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in theorder of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being."
Author: Christopher Dawson

14. "I don't find biology as interesting as politics and humanism. I talk more about existential stuff."
Author: Dana Carvey

15. "The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race."
Author: E. M. Forster

16. "If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable."
Author: E. O. Wilson

17. "Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history."
Author: Edward W. Said

18. "Eudora Welty singles out for praise Austen's "habit of seeing both sides of her own subject - of seeing it indeed in the round". ... Both men and women can be vain about their appearances, selfish about money, overawed by rank, and limited by parochialism; both men and women can function capably, think profoundly, feel deeply, create imaginatively, laugh wittily, and love faithfully. Without vindicating the rights of anyone directly, Austen posits a humanism far ahead of her time. "How really modern she is, after all," Welty concludes of Austen."
Author: Emily Auerbach

19. "As my son Frankie put it, Humanism has changed the Twenty-third Psalm: They began - I am my shepherd. Then - Sheep are my shepherd. Then - Everything is my shepherd. Finally - Nothing is my shepherd."
Author: Francis August Schaeffer

20. "To challenge humanism in any field, you must possess a uniquely biblical view of God, man, law, and time."
Author: Gary North

21. "The ideology of liberal humanism found expression in the earliest reviews of Hardy's writing and remained a dominant force until the explosion of literary theory in the 1980s. It is a broad and still influential category. It endorses the moral value of the individual, and the strength of the human spirit. It prefers the integrity of an organic rural society to the anonymity and materialism of an urbanised and technological world. Applied to fiction, this ideology involves the naturalisation of the novel's world and its values, and the recognition of fictional character as presenting a unified subject."
Author: Geoffrey Harvey

22. "Living the good life as created beings depends on living within the limits and according to the truths of the human condition. Purity of heart and the capacity to channel desires toward personal self-mastery in holiness are part of the high calling of the Christian life. These remain necessities, despite the promises of a false humanism that claims that human nature has neither limits nor boundaries, being infinitely plastic and malleable -- a vain and counterproductive attempt to liberate humans from guilt."
Author: George Cardinal Pell

23. "This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."
Author: Gloria Steinem

24. "We've also evolved the ability to simply "pay it forward": I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. "When I am older," said the boy to his father, "I will carry you across this river as you now do for me." "No, you won't," said the father stoically. "When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you." Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism--to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not."
Author: Greg M. Epstein

25. "It is cognition that is the fantasy.... Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of Will... My explanation would only show the correlation between myself and that Will by means of a correlation on the verbal level. The negation of cognition thus correlates to the negation of language. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; your chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence."
Author: Haruki Murakami

26. "Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are."
Author: Jan Peter Balkenende

27. "Humanism is not science, but religion - the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe is was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance, but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles, with no overall meaning. Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence. That is why among the ancient pagans it was unknown."
Author: John Nicholas Gray

28. "Today, for the mass of humanity, science and technology embody 'miracle, mystery, and authority'. Science promises that the most ancient human fantasies will at last be realized. Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal. Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic. Time retorts to the illusions of humanism with the reality: frail, deranged, undelivered humanity. Even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war."
Author: John Nicholas Gray

29. "Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society."
Author: John Ralston Saul

30. "I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny."
Author: Julian Huxley

31. "I am no Patriot for I try to breathe in with the steadfast belief that my country is the Earth and my religion is Humanism."
Author: K. Hari Kumar

32. "They haven't eliminated religion from the public school. They have eliminated Christianity and have replaced it with an anti-God religion—humanism."
Author: Ken Ham

33. "Green humanism? What's that? Humanism for little green men?"
Author: Ken MacLeod

34. "The Bible is a book of Science. Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology."
Author: Michael J. Findley

35. "What I am is a proud humanist. Atheism says what I don't accept, humanism says what I do." - Nathan Phelps"
Author: Nathan Phelps

36. "[Obituary of atheist philosopher Richard Robinson]An Atheist's Values is one of the best short accounts of liberalism (a term Robinson accepted) and humanism (a term he ignored) produced during the present century, all the more powerful for its lucidity and moderation, its wit and wisdom. It may now seem old-fashioned, but during those confused alarms of struggle and fight between the ignorant armies of left and right, thousands of readers must have taken inspiration from Richard Robinson's rational defence of rationalism.It is a pity that it is now out of print, when there is still so much nonsense and so little sense in the world."
Author: Nicolas Walter

37. "For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim."
Author: Oscar Wilde

38. "America's freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others."
Author: Parker Palmer

39. "To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie."
Author: Paulo Freire

40. "One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism."
Author: Peter L. Berger

41. "We are the better because of a constitution that goes beyond the spirit of the men who wrote it. Most often, in contrast, Christianity is restrictive, overly concerned about the "original intent" of its authors. But the Constitution contains the germ of an idea that allows expansion, going beyond what its founders thought. That is humanism. Humanism affirms, "There is something good even holy in the human spirit." However we define humanism, whatever we say about it, the important thing is that it makes us better."
Author: Robert Alley

42. "Le envidio (a Karen Nieto, protagonista de La mujer que buceó dentro del corazón)que primero existe y luego, a veces, piensa. Yo fui amaestrada durante 19 años para siempre estar pensando en otra cosa, estar separada de la realidad. Soy un producto típico del humanismo"
Author: Sabina Berman

43. "My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men."
Author: Sandra Cisneros

44. "My first world is humanity. My second world is humanism. And, I live in the third world being merely a human."
Author: Santosh Kalwar

45. "They are suspicious of humanism, nervous about too much style, and wary of public celebrations of the personal."
Author: Sara Levine

46. "In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism."
Author: Shirley Chisholm

47. "Hail, Columbia! Home of the six inch cockroach and the stadium-sized lecture hall. A reservation for rich white people guarded by poor brown people in a sea of urban decay. Where nobody on the faculty has ever spent ten minutes in the freshman dorm, but everybody talks about humanism and compassion. They teach you that military people are scum, trash, the lowest of the low -- and then they assign Homer's ILIAD just to develop your sense of irony. Where else can you see three suicides a month dismissed as "slightly above average, but better than Smith or Brown?"
Author: Ted Rall

48. "...having only learned to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies--my only talent--smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle..."
Author: Walker Percy

49. "Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies—my only talent—smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire."
Author: Walker Percy

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