Personhood Quotes

• Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

  Coretta Scott King

  Racism, People, Humanity

  Chicago Defender newspaper, April 01, 1998.

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• I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Religious, Believe, Moral

  19 Copy quote

• Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

  May Sarton

  Solitude, Flavor, Salt

  7 Copy quote

• What is a Person? is a clear and comprehensive reconsideration of the meaning of human personhood as the central core of social structures. With breadth of intellect and balance of wisdom, Smith resets the frame of reflection for the most important discussions of the twenty-first century.

  William B. Hurlbut

  Reflection, Balance, Important

  7 Copy quote

• To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.

  John Stott

  Home, Self Worth, Reality

  10 Copy quote

• History moves fast. It's hard to believe that gay Americans achieved full constitutional personhood just five years after corporations did!

  Stephen Colbert

  Believe, Moving, Gay

  6 Copy quote

• Veganism is the application of the principle of abolition in your own life; it represents your recognition that animals are not things. Veganism is the recognition of the moral personhood of nonhuman animals.

  Gary L. Francione

  Animal, Principles, Recognition

  6 Copy quote

• The act of consciousness is central; otherwise we are overrun by the complexes.
  The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation.
  We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice.
  When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood.
  We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves.

  James Hollis

  Hero, Voice, Knowing

  James Hollis (1993). “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife”, p.116, Inner City Books

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• I still do not understand how a corporation can have person-hood if it has no soul and never dies.

  Jon Stewart

  Soul, Corporations, Hood

  6 Copy quote

• I think that's where it comes into play, when you are just looking at a document or whatever and you see the word "disability." Does that automatically trigger something in you that denies someone their personhood?

  Zach Anner

  Thinking, Play, Doe

  Source: abilitymagazine.com

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• It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

  John Paul Stevens

  People, Feelings, Desire

  21 Copy quote

• The act of consciousness is central; otherwise we are overrun by the complexes.

  James Hollis

  Consciousness, Individuation, Complexes

  James Hollis (1993). “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife”, p.116, Inner City Books

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• We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood.

  Carl Rogers

  Mean, Loss, Growing Knowledge

  Carl Rogers (2012). “On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy”, p.382, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The move towards the extension of personhood to children is already underway, and is utterly, completely and totally unstoppable!

  Stefan Molyneux

  Children, Moving, Unstoppable

  4 Copy quote

• The offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ, came into the world to save women who have dethroned God, taken His place, defined personhood as tissue, and willed the death of their own child. It can't be reversed, but it can be forgiven. That is why Christ died.

  John Piper

  Jesus, Children, Taken

  4 Copy quote

• I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

  Zadie Smith

  Ideas, Worry, Nostalgic

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• Challege the underlying concepts of corporate personhood.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Corporate, Concepts

  5 Copy quote

• There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

  Tony Campolo

  Religious, Understanding, Doubt

  "Religion After Freud" by Tony Campolo, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2007.

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• Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.

  Gary L. Francione

  Racism, Links, Discrimination

  8 Copy quote

• There are different gradations of personhood in different poems. Some of them seem far away from me and some up close, and the up-close ones generally don't say what I want them to say. And that's true of the persona in the poem who's lamenting this as a fact of a certain stage of life. But it's also true of me as me.

  Anne Carson

  Want, Facts, Different

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• What happened?" "During the kiss?" "No, with you and Caroline." "Oh," he said. And then after a second, "Caroline is no longer suffering from personhood.

  John Green

  Kissing, Suffering, Said

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.54, Penguin UK

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• What is emotional intimacy? It is that depp sense of being connected to one another. It is feeling loved, respected and appreciated, while at the same time seeking to reciprocate. To feel loved is to have the sense that the other person genuinely cares about your well-being. Respect has to do with feeling that your potential spouse has positive regard for your personhood, intellect, abilities and personality. Appreciation is that inner sense that your partner values your contribution to the relationship.

  Gary Chapman

  Appreciation, Emotional, Personality

  44 Copy quote

• It is true that the Jewish tradition emphasizes the moral mandate to save life. It also has a different position from the Catholic Church on the moral status of the embryo. It has a more developmental view of when human life, in the sense of personhood, begins than does the Catholic Church.

  Michael Sandel

  Jewish Tradition, Views, Catholic

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Towards the end of it [working as an escort girl] I could feel myself drifting towards a liquor habit and I had a few minor mental breakdowns due to a what I felt like was a constant chipping away at my personhood (guys thinking I would have unprotected sex with them if they just paid me fifty more dollars, for instance) and a few abusive clients.

  Marie Calloway

  Girl, Sex, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's a sign of respect and connection to learn the name of someone else, a sign of disrespect to ignore it. And yet, the average American can name over a hundred corporate logos and ten plants. Is it a surprise that we have accepted a political system that grants personhood to corporations, and no status at all for wild rice and redwoods? Learning the names of plants and animals is a powerful act of support for them. When we learn their names and their gifts, it opens the door to reciprocity.

  Robin Wall Kimmerer

  Powerful, Animal, Names

  13 Copy quote