Humanity and Solidarity

When one looks at humankind today, one notices with regret that quantity does not make up for quality. If quantity could only substitute for quality, we would be in better circumstances now than was Ancient Greece.

Race is a fraud. All modern people are a conglomeration of so many ethnic mixtures that no pure race remains.

Great men are simply men and are not to be considered from the point of view of nationality, nor should the environment in which they were brought up be taken into account.

One should keep in mind that on average the moral qualities of people do not differ much from country to country.

Life is a great tapestry. The individual is only an insignificant thread in an immense and miraculous pattern.

I believe that all creatures who can have young ones together are very much the same.

We will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present-day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing.

May the conscience and the common sense of the people be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!

People are living now just as they were before… and it is clear that they have learned nothing from the horrors they have had to deal with. The little intrigues with which they had complicated their lives before are again taking up most of their thoughts. What a strange species we are.

I know people in Germany whose private lives are guided by virtually unbounded altruism, but who were awaiting the declaration of unlimited submarine warfare with the greatest impatience… These people must be shown that it is necessary to have consideration for non-Germans as worthy equals, that it is essential to earn the trust of foreign countries, in order to be able to exist, that the goals that one sets for oneself cannot be achieved through force and treachery.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

Contact between the intellectual and the masses must not be lost. It is necessary for the elevation of society and no less so for renewing the strength of the intellectual worker; for the flower of science does not grow in the desert.

And much it grieved my heart to think

The still, sad music of humanity,

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother.

Laugh and the world laughs with you;

Camerado, this is no book,

I look upon all the world as my parish.

The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.

I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.