Humanistic Quotes

• Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities.

  Alfred L. Kroeber

  Humanity, Anthropology

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• The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves.

  Paulo Freire

  Freedom, Historical, Tasks

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.32, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Nursing encompasses an art, a humanistic orientation, a feeling for the value of the individual, and an intuitive sense of ethics, and of the appropriateness of action taken.

  Myrtle Aydelotte

  Art, Taken, Nursing

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• Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.

  Bertrand Russell

  Principles, Ethics, Virtue

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• The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Men, Fields

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?

  Charles Francis Potter

  Education, Children, Teaching

  Charles Francis Potter, Mrs Clara (Cook). Potter (1930). “Hvmanism: A New Religion”

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• The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.

  Martin Seligman

  Fundamentalist Religion, Psychology, Brighter Future

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• I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.

  Ishmael Reed

  Country, Gay, Light

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• If I had a worldview, and I don't know if I do, but if I did, it's one that's intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that's the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole, it's about human connections.

  Eric Kripke

  Brother, Giving, Guy

  "'It's the fun Apocalypse': Creator Eric Kripke talks 'Supernatural'". Interview with Maureen Ryan, featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com. August 26, 2009.

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• The curriculum of the future will be what one might   call the humanistic curriculum.

  John Goodlad

  Might, Curriculum

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• My impulse is to create an aesthetic that's about a humanistic approach to a world and trying to create compassion for all the characters.

  Mike White

  Character, Compassion, Trying

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• Anything, even the conceptually most complex material, can be written for general audiences without any dumbing down. Of course you have to explain things carefully. This goes back to Galileo, who wrote his great books as dialogues in Italian, not as treatises in Latin. And to Darwin, who wrote The Origin of Species for general readers. I think a lot of people pick up Darwin's book and assume it must be a popular version of some technical monograph, but there is no technical monograph. That's what he wrote. So what I'm doing is part of a great humanistic tradition.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Latin, Book, Italian

  Interview With Michael Krasny, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

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• The state is a bankrupt institution. The only alternative to this bankrupt 'humanistic' system is a God-centered government.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Government, Religion, Alternatives

  "Anti-Defamation League book -The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America" by David Cantor and Alan M. Schwartz, 1995.

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• The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.

  Neil Postman

  People, Training, Study

  Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.32, Vintage

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• I've known gay people - men and women - since I was a young person. To me it's just naturalistic and realistic to portray gay characters in a humanistic light. As a young man, I knew enough gay people as people not to fear them. On the other side of the coin, I like to irritate conservatives and homophobes.

  Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

  Character, Gay, Men

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I get to draw what I like to draw, basically people hangin' around, and write very humanistic kinds of situations and characters. But I do also like to draw adventure stories - more in terms of drawing them than writing them - and letting my imagination go wild.

  Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

  Writing, Adventure, Character

  Source: thequietus.com

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• We are coming to the times when passive Christianity and passive Christians will cease to exist. There is a maturity, a discipline and a divine militancy coming upon the people of God. Those who have succumbed to humanistic and idealistic theologies may have a hard time with this, but we must understand that God is a military God. The title that he uses ten times more than any other is "the Lord of Hosts", or "Lord of armies". There is a martial aspect to his character that we must understand and embrace for the times and the job to which we are now coming.

  Rick Joyner

  Christian, Jobs, Military

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• Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.

  David Chalmers

  Spiritual, Religious, Atheist

  "David Chalmers on the Big Conundrum: Consciousness". Interview with Natasha Mitchell, www.abc.net.au. August 10, 2003.

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• As a piece of writing, The Elementary Particles feels like a bad, self-conscious pastiche of Camus, Foucault and Bret Easton Ellis. And as a philosophical tract, it evinces a fiercely nihilistic, anti-humanistic vision built upon gross generalizations and ridiculously phony logic. It is a deeply repugnant read.

  Michiko Kakutani

  Philosophical, Writing, Self

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• What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Class, Rights, Way

  Nawal El Saadawi (1997). “The Nawal El Saadawi Reader”, Zed Books

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• Nothing is more clear than that Christ cannot be explained by any humanistic system. He does not fit into any theory of natural evolution, for in that case the perfect flower of humanity should have appeared at the end of human history and not in the middle of it.

  Loraine Boettner

  Christian, Jesus, Flower

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• Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.

  Thomas Szasz

  Disease, Helping, Medical

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences”, p.324, Syracuse University Press

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• Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes.

  Richard Hornby

  Exercise, Play, Training

  Richard Hornby (1992). “The End of Acting: A Radical View”, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

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• I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist.

  Greg Graffin

  Believe, Doe, World

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• My parents were very well read. They were both New Englanders, not highly educated, but they had a sophisticated... they were both very humanistic, and they were sophisticated readers.

  Patti Smith

  Parent, Sophisticated, Educated

  "Patti Smith: 'I love Portland ... it's a real book town'". Interview with Jeff Baker, www.oregonlive.com. January 31, 2010.

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