Humanity and Solidarity

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith.

I think there are innumerable gods. What we here on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events. William S.

 

Because he once wrote, "We must love one another or die," he can command me to follow him. E.M.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

For it is in giving that we receive.

Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

We wear the cape of civilization But our souls live in the stone age.

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.

I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me.

 

Alle Menschen werden Briider

 

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,

 

America was promises… It was Man who had been promised.

 

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

 

Ah! when shall all men’s good Be each man’s rule, and universal peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year?

 

Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal, Daughter of Elysium! Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing Goddess, to thy shrine we come. Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are. 1

 

One great society alone on Earth,

Are we not Men?

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either toreasons of state, or to any consideration ofmoney, nationality, race, or color, or to themoral or other value attributed to the humanbeing in question, or to any considerationwhatsoever.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

To those of my race who . . . underestimatethe importance of cultivating friendly relationswith the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, “Cast down yourbucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of allraces by whom we are surrounded.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

We Bokonists believe that humanity isorganized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon.