Humanitarianism Quotes - Page 2

• In a conquered country benevolence is not humanitarianism. It is a general political axiom that a conqueror must not inspire a good opinion of his benevolence until he has demonstrated that he can be severe with malefactors.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Country, Political, Inspire

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• The repentant, run-to-seed ultra-Leftists who have converted to humanitarianism, artificial inseminators of the widow and the orphan, themselves orphans of reality and malades imaginaires of politics, premature ejaculators of posthistory and hyperchondriacs of the dead body of ideology and morality.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Running, Reality, Widows

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• It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Hurt, Loss, Law

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• I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Thinking, Tyrants, Should

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. . . . I call C the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Together, Forgotten

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.107, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his.

  Paul Johnson

  Passion, Men, Views

  Paul Johnson (2013). “Modern Times: A History of the World From the 1920s to the Year 2000”, Hachette UK

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• It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.

  Terry Eagleton

  Sympathy, Lying, Writing

  "What would Rousseau make of our selfish age?" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. June 27, 2012.

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• A God out there and values out there, if they existed, would be utterly useless and unintelligible to us. There is nothing to be gained by nostalgia for the old objectivism, which was in any case used only to justify arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. People [forget] ... how utterly hateful the old pre-humanitarianism world was.

  Don Cupitt

  People, Arrogance, Would Be

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• The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

  John Donne

  Heaven, Kingdoms, Rich

  John Donne (1839). “The works of John Donne. With a memoir by H. Alford”, p.196

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• Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?

  Lewis Thomas

  Giving Up, Animal, Self

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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• I know a 'crime against nature' when I see one. It is usually a sign of crimes against nature that we cannot bear to see them at all, that we recoil and hide our eyes, and no one has ever cringed at the sight of a soybean factory. I also know phony arguments when I hear them--unbridled appetite passing itself off as altruism, and human arrogance in the guise of solemn 'duty.' We must, as C.S. Lewis advises, 'reject with detestation that covert propoganda for cruelty which tries to drive mercy out of the world by calling it names such as 'Humanitarianism' and 'Sentimentality.

  Matthew Scully

  Eye, Sight, Names

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• In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Humanity, Abstract, Oneself

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• Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.

  Marcel Proust

  Egoism, Humans, Altruism

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Remembrance of Things Past Time Regained”, p.274, Marcel Proust

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• High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.

  H. L. Mencken

  Suffering, Overestimate

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• Besides the respect of the lives of human beings, all the animals and plants should be on the list too. That is the real humanitarianism.

  Gautama Buddha

  Real, Commitment, Animal

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• The present dominant values (xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, narcissistic individualism, humanitarianism, bourgeois economism, hedonism, homophilia, permissivenes, etc.) are actually anti-values - values of devirilising weakness, since they deplete a civilization's vital energies and weaken its defensive or affirmative capacities.

  Guillaume Faye

  Civilization, Weakness, Energy

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• vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Vegetarianism

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