Humanist Quotes - Page 5

• I would say I'm a humanist. I like that. I mean, I don't claim to know anything, but I'm curious about it all. I'm always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything.

  Conor Oberst

  Believe, Mean, Hard Times

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I would love to say that I'm a humanist, but I think the word "feminist" still needs to exist to acknowledge that there's still a problem. It's a statement; we're not equal yet. There's still a fight to be fought.

  Erin Maya Darke

  Fighting, Thinking, Feminist

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• Christians believe that God created man, and humanists believe that man invented God. But whichever way you look at it, we're brothers and sisters. Either we're brothers and sisters because we're children of God, or because we've banded together to invent God. So the ethics of the humanist and the ethics of some Christians are very similar. And we don't want to create divisions between humanists and Liberation Theologians, any more than we want between the New Worker and the Trots. It's not helpful.

  Tony Benn

  Christian, Brother, Children

  Source: think-left.org

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• Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.

  Wole Soyinka

  Genius, Creation, Invention

  Source: ynaija.com

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• It's fantastic to believe, because they get so many benefits. I get mad at the atheist community when they put down believers because they put down religion so much. Now I am an atheist, but I don't like to describe myself with that term. I prefer secular humanist. But I do see first hand how beneficial religion is, for example if you are a refugee getting in a boat to take you across the Mediterranean, a belief in God is an advantage. I completely understand that comfort.

  Julia Sweeney

  Atheist, Believe, Mad

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• I'm a humanist. I'm neither one side nor the other.

  David Attenborough

  Sides

  Source: www.lagoonsociety.com

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• I think this word 'disbelieve' would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody were an atheist or an agnostic or a humanist - his or her own particular brand - but as for compelling people to this, absolutely not.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Thinking, People

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• I still don't want to be put in the feminist bag. I'm a humanist.

  Patti Smith

  Feminist, Bags, Want

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• An abiding and central concern of philosophy and religion alike is the fear that the world is alien to human beings, that nature is, in Hegel's words, 'out and out other' to 'spirit'. It's easy enough to see how 'constructivist' or 'humanist' conceptions are efforts to dispel this fear.

  David E. Cooper

  Philosophy, Effort, World

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero.

  Tavis Smiley

  Hero, Mind, American Hero

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I am Left Wing. I am a Humanist.

  Gaspar Noe

  Wings, Left Wing, Left

  Source: www.freepatentsonline.com

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• The only difference between a Religious Humanist and a Secular Humanist is what they do on Sunday.

  Fred Edwords

  Religious, Sunday, Differences

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• Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.

  Peter Padfield

  Philosophy, Struggle, Past

  Peter Padfield (2000). “Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World”, Overlook Books

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• Only rarely do we see beyond the needs of humanity, and he linked this blindness to our Christian and humanist infrastructure. It arose 2,000 years ago and was then benign, and we were no significant threat to Gaia. Now that we are over six billion hungry and greedy individuals, all aspiring to a first-world lifestyle, our urban way of life encroaches upon the domain of the living Earth.

  James Lovelock

  Christian, Years, Humanity

  James Lovelock (2007). “The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back and How We Can Still Save Humanity”, p.21, Penguin UK

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• In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.

  John Ralston Saul

  Creativity, Ideas, Interesting

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• The courts are merely a ruse, if you will, for humanist, atheistic educators to beat up on Christians.

  Pat Robertson

  Christian, Educator, Beats

  "The 700 Club". News, Talk-Show, www.imdb.com. (1966 - ).

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• Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist - which I am.

  Roger Ebert

  Atheist, Intelligent, Design

  "Life Itself : A Memoir". Book by Roger Ebert, 2011.

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• The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart.

  Mark Thomas

  Essence, Religion, Atheism

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• Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can't claim any special place for myself except that, as an Austrian, a Jew, writer, humanist and pacifist, I have always been precisely in those places where the effects of the thrusts were most violent.

  Stefan Zweig

  Special, Upheaval, Soil

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• Our humanist community should be thinking more about demonstrating the fundamental truth that goodness requires neither God nor the belief in God by organizing together as a community to do good. Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Thinking, Compassion, Soup Kitchens

  Interview with Jennifer Bardi, thehumanist.com. April 29, 2010.

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• However, we all share the firm belief in the triumph of humanist and progressive values that mankind has achieved during its long history of struggle and creativeness.

  Tran ?uc Luong

  Struggle, Long, Triumph

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• I am a humanist not a feminist. Theres a big difference.

  Lydia Lunch

  Differences, Feminist, Bigs

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• At one point, 'feminist' became a pejorative term. How did that happen? If you're a feminist, you're basically saying you're a humanist.

  Julianne Moore

  Feminist, Term, Happens

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• It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Atheist, Islam, Labels

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• There is no place in the Humanist worldview for either immortality or God in the valid meanings of those terms. Humanism contends that instead of the gods creating the cosmos, the cosmos, in the individualized form of human beings giving rein to their imagination, created the gods.

  Corliss Lamont

  Creating, Giving, Imagination

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