Humanity and Solidarity

Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.

We are here on earth to do good for others; what the others are here for I have no idea.

Until you walk a mile in another man’s moccasins you can’t imagine the smell.

Man was formed for society and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.

Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner’s success as a means for the attainment of his own.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellowmen; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

The best portion of a good man’s life is in his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know that man is here for the sake of other men.

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.

The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

A powerful searchlight of the human mind, piercing by its rays the darkness of the unknown, has suddenly been extinguished. The world has lost its foremost genius and the Jewish people its most illustrious son in the present generation.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the

A man’s value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.

We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.