As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.--Carl Jung

As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect the uniqueness of others.--Robert H. Schuller

At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds.--Michael Dorris

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.--St. Teresa of Avila

But although denying that we have a special position in the natural world might seem becomingly modest in the eye of eternity, it might also be used as an excuse for evading our responsibilities. The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all living creatures with whom we share the earth.--David Attenborough (Life on Earth)

Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place.--Rosalynn Carter

... everyone who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter, or draw a picture, or sing, or make a dress or a garden.--Brenda Ueland

Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.--Freya Stark (Ionia)

The greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention to one another's existence.--Sue Atchley Ebaugh

The greatest need in the world at this moment is the transformation of human nature.--Billy Graham ("Focus on Hong Kong")

Hell is a giant banquet room with tables filled with every possible good thing to eat and drink. The people are all seated at the banquet tables, but they are all starving, emaciated, skin on skeleton figures. They are chained in such a way that they can reach out and pick up the food, but the chains prevent them from bringing the food to their mouth.In the ultimate cruelty, they are dying of starvation with food in their hands.
Surprisingly, the Heaven is also a giant banquet room with tables filled with all the same, wonderful, choices as before. And just as before, the people are all chained so that they can pick up the food, but can't bring it to their mouth. However, in this banquet room, the people are all healthy. They are laughing, singing and enjoying themselves. The difference? In Heaven, they have realized that although they cannot feed themselves, the chains allow them to feed each other.--Anonymous

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.--Albert Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.--Albert Einstein

Human nature is so constituted that is we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.--Mahatma Gandhi

Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.--Alfred North Whitehead ("Harvard: The Future" Atlantic, September 1936) 

I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given the chance.--James A. Autry

If everyone would take only according to his needs and would leave the surplus to the needy, no one would be rich, no one poor, no one in misery.--St. Basil

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.--François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims)

If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.--Marian Wright Edelman

If, when you charged a person with his faults, you credited him with his virtues too, you would probably like everybody.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

I'm quite sure that ... I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me he can't be any worse.--Mark Twain

In the final analysis there is no other solution to man's progress but the day's honest work, the day's honest decision, the day's generous utterances, and the day's good deed.--Clare Booth Luce

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.--George Bernard Shaw

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.--Hermann Hesse

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.--Zora Neale Hurston

Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation.--Loren Eiseley

Man is unique not because he does science, and his is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.--Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man)

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.--Bern Williams

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.--Martin Luther King Jr. (Strength to Love)

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.--G. K. Chesterton

A moment's thought shows that man's feeling of isolation has no foundation, biologically or sociologically. We grow out of the Universe, we are an expression of it. The iron in our blood comes from the high temperature fusion of stars. We constantly interact with our environment. The force of gravity keeps our feet upon the earth and has a vital effect upon our metabolism. The air we breathe comes form the seas and the leaves, and the sun allows the process to take place. Society gives us all that makes us human: our culture, our symbols, our concepts and our values. Without society, the notion of the individual would have no meaning.--Paul Ingram

Never underestimate the capacity of another human being to have exactly the same shortcomings you have.--Leigh Steinberg (America West)

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of continent, a part of the main.--John Donne

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.--May Sarton

One of Albert Schweitzer's last statements was quoted as: "The destiny of man is to be more and more human." He was mistaken. The destiny of man is to become progressively less human and more humane, less compulsive and more creative, less instinctive and more intuitive, less material and more spiritual. Man's destiny is to always become more fully divine.--Gordon Tibbles

One of the best ways to measure people is how they behave when something free is offered.--Ann Landers

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.--Margaret Mead

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.--Margaret Atwood

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.--Margaret Mead

The paradox of our time in history is that:
we have taller buildings, cut shorter tempers;
wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints;
we spend more, but have less;
we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
wee have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgement;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicine, but less wellness.

We have multiplied our possessions,
but reduces our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, hate too often.
We learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We've added years to life, but not life to years.

W've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space;
we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul;
we've split the atom, but not our prejudice;
we have higher incomes, but lower morals;
we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of tall men, and short character;
steep profits, and shallow relationships.
These are the times of world peace
but domestic warfare;
more leisure, but less fun;
more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce;
of fancier houses, but broken homes.
It is a time when there is much in the show window
and nothing in the stockroom;
a time when technology can bring this letter to you,
and a time when you can choose
either to make a difference--
or just hit delete.--Anonymous ("The Paradox")

Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. No destructive lies. No ridiculous fears. No debilitating anger.--Bill Bradley

Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.--Adam Michnik

There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.--Elie Wiesel

Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate, to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers and sisters.--Maya Angelou

These things will destroy the human race:
politics without principle,
progress without compassion,
wealth without work,
learning without silence,
religion without fearlessness
and worship without awareness.--Anthony de Mello

To be nobody-but-yourself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.--e. e. cummings

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.--Martin Luther King, Jr.

We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.--Tim McGraw

We are a nation of communities...a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.--George Herbert Walker Bush (Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, 1988, acutally written by Peggy Noonan)

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.--Pierre Teihard de Chardin

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.--Goethe

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.--Seneca

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that everyone of those darkly clustered houses encloses it's own secret that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of it's imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!--Charles Dickens (A Tale Of Two Citites)

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.--Marie Curie