Mankind Quotes - Page 25

• O why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heav'n With Spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With men as angels without feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind?

  John Milton

  Wise, Angel, Men

  1665 Adam speaking of Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.10, l.888-95.

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• And now without redemption all mankind Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell By doom severe.

  John Milton

  Redemption, Hell, Lost

  John Milton (1773). “The First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost: Rendered Into Grammatical Construction ... with Notes Grammatical, Geographical, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory. To which are Prefixed Remarks on Ellipsis and Transposition ...”, p.191

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• The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Community, Ruins, Thousand

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1988). “Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy”

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• Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  God, Character, Perfect

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.270

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• You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Love, Circles, Individual

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1980). “Shelley on Love: An Anthology”, p.82, Univ of California Press

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• We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind.

  Maria Montessori

  Teacher, Men, Waiting

  "The Absorbent Mind" by Maria Montessori, Part I, (p. 9), 1949.

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• A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.

  Lin Yutang

  Wild Geese, Might, Too Much

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

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• What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini... in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.

  Lin Yutang

  Loyalty, Appreciation, Sweet

  Lin Yutang (2013). “Lin Yutang - The Importance Of Living”, p.31, Read Books Ltd

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• The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Teaching, Thinking

  Robertson Davies (1993). “Fortune, My Foe and Eros at Breakfast”, p.8, Dundurn

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• Energy and curiosity are the lifeblood of universities; the desire to find out, to uncover, to dig deeper, to puzzle out obscurities, is the spirit of the university, and it is a channelling of that unresting curiosity that holds mankind together.

  Robertson Davies

  Curiosity, Desire, Together

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

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• In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

  Max Beerbohm

  Character, Class, Two

  Max Beerbohm (2006). “And Even Now”, p.81, 1st World Publishing

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• All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

  Walter Bagehot

  Fall, Men, Hunting

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.186

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• The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Optimistic, Differences, Intellectual

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.377, Courier Corporation

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• What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?

  Jane Addams

  Men, Race, Order

  Jane Addams (2010). “Peace and Bread in Time of War”, p.85, University of Illinois Press

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• The real need of the day is moral and spiritual rearmament. God's Living Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all citizens in the service of the nation, and all nations in the service of mankind.

  Stanley Baldwin

  Spiritual, Real, Order

  The Times, September 10, 1938.

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• A new danger now beset him [Grotius], the danger of becoming simply a venal pleader, a creature who grinds out arguments on this or that side, for this or that client: a mere legal beast of prey. Fortunately for himself and for the world he took a higher view of his life-work: his determination clearly was to make himself a thoroughly equipped jurist, and then, as he rose more and more in his profession, to use his powers for the good of his country and of mankind.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Country, Determination, Views

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, p. 59, 1915.

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• My business is to obey when the Lord commands, and this is the duty of all mankind.

  Brigham Young

  Lord, Duty, Command

  Brigham Young (1867). “Journal of Discourses”, p.111

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• The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron.

  James G. Frazer

  Past, Iron, Savages

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alterations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.

  James G. Frazer

  Summer, Spring, Autumn

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.

  James G. Frazer

  Wise, Long, Crime

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer.

  James Fitzjames Stephen

  Fire, Liberty, Answers

  "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Book by James Fitzjames Stephen, Ch.2, 1873-1874.

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• Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is - both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology - of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dog, Horse, Motivation

  Letter to James F. Morton (1929), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 483), 1996.

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• The unknown ... became for our primitive forefathers a terrible and omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind for cryptic and wholly extra-terrestrial reasons, and thus clearly belonging to spheres of existence whereof we know nothing and wherein we have no part.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Spheres, Reason, Source

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.413, OUP Oxford

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• It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients - or their lack - and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Real, Law, Evil

  "Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 70), 2006.

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• The loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed his subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares.

  Georg Brandes

  Spring, Long, Loathing

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.58, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

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