117 Thought-Provoking Humanism Quotes

In a world where diverse philosophies and ideologies intersect, humanism stands out for its focus on human values, ethics, and the potential for human agency. Rooted in the belief that humans are capable of improving their lives through reason and empathy, humanism challenges us to consider profound questions about existence, morality, and our place in the universe. This collection of 117 thought-provoking humanism quotes serves as a window into the minds of great thinkers, offering insights and inspiration for those who seek to understand and embrace the essence of being human. Whether you're searching for a deeper connection to your own humanity or examining the broader human experience, these quotes will encourage reflection and provoke meaningful discussions.

1. “Someone ... tell us what's important, because we no longer know.” - Richard Ford

2. “I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.” - Sir William Bragg

3. “Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

4. “We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence” - Voltaire

5. “… my century..is unique in the history of men for two reasons. It is the first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God. And it is the century in which this religious rejection has taken a specifically political form….” - Whittaker Chambers

6. “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.” - Daisaku Ikeda

7. “Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.” - George Carlin

8. “Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” - Kurt Vonnegut

9. “A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.” - Erich Fromm

10. “I believe that the universe was formed around 15 billion years ago and that humans have evolved from their apelike ancestors over the past few million years. I believe we are more likely to live a good life if all humans try to work together in a world community, preserving planet earth. When decisions for groups are made in this world, I believe that the democratic process should be used. To protect the individual, I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, freedom of inquiry, and a wall of separation between church and state. When making decisions about what is right or wrong, I believe I should use my intelligence to reason about the likely consequences of my actions. I believe that I should try to increase the happiness of everyone by caring for other people and finding ways to cooperate. Never should my actions discriminate against people simply because of their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. I believe that ideas about what is right and wrong will change with education, so I am prepared to continually question ideas using evidence from experience and science. I believe there is no valid evidence to support claims for the existence of supernatural entities and deities. I will use these beliefs to guide my thinking and my actions until I find good reasons for revising them or replacing them with other beliefs that are more valid.” - Ronald P. Carver

11. “Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.” - Jules Henri Poincare

12. “I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.'Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.” - Graham Greene

13. “Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.” - Rosa Luxemburg

14. “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

15. “This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.” - Gloria Steinem

16. “What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.” - Sam Harris

17. “The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. ” - Sam Harris

18. “It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.” - Sam Harris

19. “What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.” - Sam Harris

20. “The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.” - Sam Harris

21. “We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.” - Sam Harris

22. “When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.” - Sam Harris

23. “If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.” - Sam Harris

24. “Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.” - Sam Harris

25. “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.” - Sam Harris

26. “The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation.” - Sam Harris

27. “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.” - bell hooks

28. “If peace is to come to earth through change in man's environment, instead of through change in man himself, it will never come. -- Philip Mauro in "The Number of Man the Climax of Civilization” - Philip Mauro

29. “There are many lay people and scholars alike, both with and without the Muslim community, who feel that the pure orthodox Islam of the fundamentalists could never survive outside the context of its seventh-century Arabian origins. Apply twenty-first-century science, logic, or humanistic reasoning to it and it falls apart.They believe this is why Islam has always relied so heavily on the threat of death. Question Islam, malign Islam, or leave Islam and you will be killed. It is a totalitarian modus operandi that silences all dissent and examination, thereby protecting the faith from ever having to defend itself.” - Brad Thor

30. “Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.” - Joss Whedon

31. “The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.” - George Eliot

32. “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” - Mahatma Gandhi

33. “You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity.” - Christopher Hitchens

34. “I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods.” - Ruth Hurmence Green

35. “A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

36. “But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” - Albert Camus

37. “Humanists were people who wanted to return to ideas found in old Greek and Latin writing of Greece and Rome, written many centuries earlier. Christian Humanists also wanted to get back to these ideas, but they were mainly concerned with learning about the early Christian Church, before it had become involved with money-making and superstition. They wanted to read the books of the early Church, especially the gospels of Christ, in the original language of Greek, so that they would know exactly what the writings meant. The leader of the Christian Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who attacked superstitions in the Catholic Church in his writing.” - Michael Mullett

38. “In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.” - Kevin Alan Lee

39. “Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.” - Christopher Hitchens

40. “Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.” - M. Scott Peck

41. “Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.” - Wangari Maathai

42. “Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anyone who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!" -The prayer of the Reverend C. Horner Redwine” - Kurt Vonnegut

43. “The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.” - Chris Hedges

44. “The determination to win is the better part of winning.” - Daisaku Ikeda

45. “People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.” - Daisaku Ikeda

46. “Salute to the Smiling Faces of the 21st Century.” - Daisaku Ikeda

47. “The heart is what is important." There is nothing more vulnerable, nothing more corruptible than the human mind; nor is there anything as powerful, steadfast and ennobling.” - Daisaku Ikeda

48. “The economy is after all driven by people. No matter how dire the situation may be, as long as people are firm, a turnaround, revival and progress can be possible.” - Daisaku Ikeda

49. “Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.” - Daisaku Ikeda

50. “Reality is harsh. It can be cruel and ugly. Yet no matter how much we grieve over our environment and circumstances nothing will change. What is important is not to be defeated, to forge ahead bravely. If we do this, a path will open before us.” - Daisaku Ikeda

51. “Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.” - Daisaku Ikeda

52. “The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form.” - Daisaku Ikeda

53. “Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality's soil.” - Daisaku Ikeda

54. “it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.” - Daisaku Ikeda

55. “Even if things don't unfold the way you expected, don't be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.” - Daisaku Ikeda

56. “I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.” - C. JoyBell C.

57. “There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” - C. JoyBell C.

58. “I consider myself a stained-glass window. And this is how I live my life. Closing no doors and covering no windows; I am the multi-colored glass with light filtering through me, in many different shades. Allowing light to shed and fall into many many hues. My job is not to direct anything, but only to filter into many colors. My answer is destiny and my guide is joy. And there you have me.” - C. JoyBell C.

59. “There is something simply beautiful and simply innocent, in being human. It is just so innocent and beautiful. I love it.” - C. JoyBell C.

60. “There is light in the world, and it is us!” - Eliezer Yudkowsky

61. “Anger is an essential part of being human. People are taught to deny themselves anger, and in this, they are actually opening themselves up to hate. The more you deny yourself the freedom to be angry, the more you will hate. Let yourself be angry, and hate will disintegrate, and when hate disintegrates, forgiveness prevails! The more you deny that you are angry, in attempts to be "holy" the more inhuman you will become, and the more inhuman you will become, the harder it will be to forgive.” - C. JoyBell C.

62. “Anger is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.” - C. JoyBell C.

63. “It is when we think we can act like God, that all respect is lost, and I think this is the downfall of peace. We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see! It is never a conformity that we need! We need not to conform! What we need is to burst out into all these beautiful colors!” - C. JoyBell C.

64. “God is colourblind. But we are not God. God does not need to see colour and difference. God is far bigger than all of that. We are human. We are destined to grow and learn from each other and with each other and there is no growing, there is no learning, there is no wonder and no majesty in life if we were like God. We were meant to see colour and difference.To deny these is to lack respect. To blind ourselves to these is to fool one another. To shun these is to deny ourselves growth and knowledge.” - C. JoyBell C.

65. “We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don't share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me.” - C. JoyBell C.

66. “The downfall of the attempts of governments and leaders to unite mankind is found in this- in the wrong message that we should see everyone as the same. This is the root of the failure of harmony. Because the truth is, we should not all see everyone as the same! We are not the same! We are made of different colours and we have different cultures. We are all different! But the key to this door is to look at these differences, respect these differences, learn from and about these differences, and grow in and with these differences. We are all different. We are not the same. But that's beautiful. And that's okay.In the quest for unity and peace, we cannot blind ourselves and expect to be all the same. Because in this, we all have an underlying belief that everyone should be the same as us at some point. We are not on a journey to become the same or to be the same. But we are on a journey to see that in all of our differences, that is what makes us beautiful as a human race, and if we are ever to grow, we ought to learn and always learn some more.” - C. JoyBell C.

67. “And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.” - Terry Pratchett

68. “I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.” - Carl R. Rogers

69. “Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.” - Christopher Hitchens

70. “The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it” - Moses Maimonides

71. “You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.” - C. JoyBell C.

72. “Growing up means learning what life is. When you're little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn't like that, for anybody; you can't fall in love with a standard, you have to fall in love with a person. You can't live in a criteria, you have to live your life. You can't wait for your plans to materialize, because they may never materialize the way you think they will. You can't wait to watch your ideals and standards walk up to you, because you can't know what's yours until you have it. I always say, always take the first chance in case you never get a second one, but growing up takes that even one step further, growing up means that you have to hold on to what you have, when you have it, because what you have- that's yours- and all the ideals and criteria you have set in your head, those aren't yours, because those haven't happened to you.” - C. JoyBell C.

73. “As my son Frankie put it, Humanism has changed the Twenty-third Psalm: They began - I am my shepherd. Then - Sheep are my shepherd. Then - Everything is my shepherd. Finally - Nothing is my shepherd.” - Francis A. Schaeffer

74. “The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.” - Roger Zelazny

75. “We humans who art on EarthHumanity is specialOur kingdom has comeDo what we innately know to be rightOn earth, because that's all there isShare the bread we haveTry not to screw upWhen others screw up, understandWe can't have everything that tempts usDeliver ourselves from evilBecause this is it, the Earth,The power to do right and the glory to come if we do is oursNow and forever,Hu-man.” - Marcus Brigstocke

76. “Man is not defiled by his impurities. It is the other man pointing out his impurities to him, whom he is defiled by. Is there anything anyone can do, to become righteous, anyway? God made us impure. If he had a problem with that, He would have made us gods, instead.” - C. JoyBell C.

77. “I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me.” - C. JoyBell C.

78. “Saya akan lebih mendulukan kebenaran-kebenaran universal, bukan hutang budi, bukan kewajiban moral dan bukan juga pengabdian buta.” - Putu Wijaya

79. “Apalah yang bisa pasti dari perasaan manusia?” - Seno Gumira Ajidarma

80. “If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

81. “Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.” - Isaac Asimov

82. “لم يجد العسكري في حياته كلها لم يجد متعة أعظم من أن يجلس السعات إلى عم حسن ، ويسمعه بمفرده أو معه الآخرون وهو يحدثهم ، ومن ذات نفسه يفرجهم على عوالم غريبة رائعة وليالي وكأنها مسحورة ترى من فنجان ، وأيام وأحداث وكأنها اغترفت من أكداس الروايات ، مع أنه في كل ما كان يتحدث به لم يكن هناك أثر للخيال ، فما رآه رأي العين أغرب مما يراه الآخرون رأي الخيال .. لاشك أن المتع كثيرة ولكن يبدو أن أمتعها جميعاً وأحلاها هي متعة أن تعرف ، متعة أن تعلم ما تجهله أو تزداد علماً بما تعرفه ، وكل ما يحدث عنه عم حسن دائماً جديد غير مطروق ، أناس وكأنهم ليسوا من جنس الناس ، وإنما من نوع آخر لا يتبدى إلا لعم حسن .. أو كأنهم الناس ، ولكن أشياء منهم مغلقة تفتح بكلمة سر لا يعرفها إلا الرجل العجوز.” - يوسف إدريس

83. “Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel wenn ein Affe hineinsieht so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

84. “Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say "What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?" If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness.” - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

85. “Be the slaughterhouse for sacred cows.” - Cassandra Duffy

86. “As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.” - Christopher Hitchens

87. “We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world—indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states—the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.” - Peter Sloterdijk

88. “The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'—the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.” - Christopher Hitchens

89. “Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.” - Christian Smith

90. “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” - Bertrand Russell

91. “I feel it respectful to observe and practice new customs, if I am to ever understand what it truly means to be human.” - Jacob D. Lochner

92. “All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

93. “God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.” - Christopher Hitchens

94. “Eudora Welty singles out for praise Austen's "habit of seeing both sides of her own subject - of seeing it indeed in the round". ... Both men and women can be vain about their appearances, selfish about money, overawed by rank, and limited by parochialism; both men and women can function capably, think profoundly, feel deeply, create imaginatively, laugh wittily, and love faithfully. Without vindicating the rights of anyone directly, Austen posits a humanism far ahead of her time. "How really modern she is, after all," Welty concludes of Austen.” - Emily Auerbach

95. “Hope is believing in something that eludes you. It's a desperate feeling in a desperate situation.” - Carroll Bryant

96. “My spirit is healthy, yes. But I tell you, my flesh is healthy too. I am enlightened and free, but I am also lustful and carnal.” - C. JoyBell C.

97. “It is arguable that when Humanists, "Shook off," as people say, "the trammels of religion," and discovered things of this world as objects of veneration in their own right... they began to lose the finer appreciation of even the world itself. Thus to the Christian centuries, the flesh was holy (or sacer at least in one sense or the other), and they veiled its awful majesty; to the Humanist centuries it was divine in its own right, and they exhibited it. Now it is the commonplace of the magazine cover. It has lost its numen. So too with the cult of knowledge for its own sake declining from the Revival of Learning to the Brains Trust.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

98. “The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other.” - Wole Soyinka

99. “At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but -- I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture -- that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron. [From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.]” - Joss Whedon

100. “You can spend your life judging people or, you can spend it making friends. Take your pick.” - Carroll Bryant

101. “Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies—my only talent—smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.” - Walker Percy

102. “There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!” - Eliezer Yudkowsky

103. “The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.” - John Rawls

104. “Yes, the human race is a small species in an infinite universe filled with many other planets and many other things, but though small; this race is bearer of very great and big things: Destiny, Virtue, Hope, Love... and that's what makes this species different. That's what makes this species very shiny and very visible and very important, in a whole, whole, big, big, vast, expanding universe!” - C. JoyBell C.

105. “Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.” - Mahatma Gandhi

106. “ People don't always tell you what they are thinking. They just see to it that you don't advance in life. ” - Anthony Hopkins

107. “إن العلم يعطينا صورة فوتوغرافية دقيقة عن العالم، وإن كانت تفتقر إلى بعد جوهري للواقع. حيث يتميز العلم بفهم طبيعي خاطئ لكل ما هو حي وكل ما هو إنساني. إنه بمنطقه التحليلي المجرد يجعل الحياة خلوا من الحياة.” - علي عزت بيجوفيتش

108. “Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.” - Melissa V. Harris-Perry

109. “Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.” - Edward W. Said

110. “We've already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge—like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

111. “We are sorry about the way things turned out. We gave, in the phrasing of our words if not literally in the words themselves, the false impression that these pages might hold some small fragment, some slight fragrance of a greater truth. That there might be something here to be learned. Before we go any further the author of this cartoon wishes to make an apology. Such an impression was deliberately cultivated. It is a ruse. It is a lie. We are every bit as lost and afraid as children abandoned in a wood: every bit as lost as you.” - Anders Nilsen

112. “My first world is humanity. My second world is humanism. And, I live in the third world being merely a human.” - Santosh Kalwar

113. “How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an 'Adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.” - Pope Benedict-XVI

114. “The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes.” - Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina p. 15

115. “Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

116. “Next year, Equality Now will celebrate - if that’s the word - will clock its twentieth year. Two decades of fighting the good fight, fighting the cause, and in case I haven’t been the clear, the cause is that one half of the human race is given the same basic equal rights that the other half enjoys.Or, not given. Given back.That is not a milestone, twenty years, that I intend to go unnoticed. I want to make some noise. I want to make a joyful noise, I want to make too much noise. I want the neighbors to complain. I’m tired of being polite about something that matters so much.” - Joss Whedon

117. “It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more "product thinking" in leadership--leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status--Steve Jobs--recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets.” - Damon Horowitz