Humanity and Solidarity

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.

 

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

 

To see the earth as we now see it, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night—brothers who see now they are truly brothers.

 

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: . . . until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; . . . until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; . . . until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; . . . until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

 

We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional, and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique . . . a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

 

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists.

[Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.

It is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in Father’s earthly house as well as in the heavenly ones.

The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons.

Man would be otherwise. That is the essence of the specifically human.

The hungry and the homeless don’t care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

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

In the dust where we have buried the silent races and their abominations we have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the Headless Monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

I take as my guide the hope of a saint in crucial things, unity - in important things, diversity - in all things, generosity.

Beware how you take away hope from another human being.

With what you don't know about me, I could just about fill the Grand Canyon.

The historian must have some conceptions of how men who are not historians behave.

They go forth with well-developed bodies, developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart-not a cold one.

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them.

For though I do not ask for aid, we need it. J. R. R.