Humanity and Solidarity

Intellectual disgrace

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

The people are the foundation of the country, and food is of the highest importance to the people.

The highest form of doing good is like water; water benefits all things but does not seek anything (for itself).

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.

Interdependence is, and ought to be, as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

The Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved of a history which they did not commit.

i speak for none of you now, all you plotters of perfect crimes, nor for me, nor for anyone. i speak for those who can’t speak, for the deaf and dumb witnesses, for otters and seals, for the ancient owls of the earth.

Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.

We must love one another or die.

Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window Or just walking dully along.

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness, Could not ourselves be kind. But you, when at last it comes to pass That man can help his fellow man, Do not judge us Too harshly.

pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger’s wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place.

That in each other are included, the whole, The complicate, the amassing harmony.

The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds lashing the corners of the earth. The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope. Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family— But not much in between unless a college.

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”