Humanist Quotes - Page 3

• A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry or animal behaviour.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Animal, Men, Humanity

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• I am a misanthropic humanist... Do I like people? They're great, IN THEORY.

  Bill Hicks

  People, Misanthropic, Theory

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• Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians.

  Jacques Ellul

  Goal, Ends, Technicians

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• We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept.

  Philippe Starck

  Design, Goodness, Concepts

  "Design and Technology for the Next Generation". Book edited by David Barlex, 2007.

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• The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound. . . . Throughout history . . . there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal.

  Corliss Lamont

  Philosophy, Men, Self

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• It does not matter to the killers if their victims are Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Humanist; what matters is that they show that they can kill where they please.

  Rowan Williams

  Christian, What Matters, Doe

  "Today is not an occasion for us to focus on fear" by Rowan Williams, www.theguardian.com. November 1, 2005.

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• Justice needs money; it always has . . . whether for abolition of slavery and early women's rights movements or the civil rights and environmental drives of our generation.

  Ralph Nader

  Rights, Our Generation, Abolition Of Slavery

  Ralph Nader (2014). “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State”, p.192, Nation Books

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• The triumph of anything is a matter of organization.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Struggle Between Good And Evil, Organization, Mafia

  Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.167, Dial Press

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• When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?

  Joss Whedon

  Fun, Writing, Men

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• The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle - secular, humanist, or religious - says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not?

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Religious, Ivf, Dna

  "Human Clones: Why Not?" by Nathan Myhrvold, www.slate.com. March 14, 1997.

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• To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.

  John Braine

  Believe, Writing, People

  John Braine (1975). “Writing a Novel”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• I took a page from [the playwright] Wendy Wasserstein's book. She said 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.'

  Sarah Jessica Parker

  Book, Feminist, Pages

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• It's no understatement that the church has done a poor job in teaching our young people that reason and faith are not opposites, and that atheists are far from being on the side of reason. You can find on our website a chart which I use to demonstrate the various worldviews work out, and which one, Christianity, is rational. Many kids, however, who grow up huddled in a Christian environment find themselves in the university setting completely unequipped to defend the rationality of the Christian faith against the secular humanist worldview so prevalent on college campuses.

  Charles Colson

  Christian, Atheist, Jobs

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• The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.

  Irving Howe

  Intellectual, Independence, Mind

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• Happiness is not synonymous with pleasure. It is, instead, a deeper emotion that originates from within. . . . Happiness results from a sense of mental and moral contentment with who we are, what we value, and how we invest our time and resources for purposes beyond ourselves.

  David Shi

  Contentment, Purpose, Who We Are

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• [Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.

  Richard Rorty

  Dream, Country, Law

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• There is humanist enterprise of the book, and amongst that there are many, many stories. And that is why at the end, when he says that the stories are so illuminating that they must be engraved and encased in gold and put in the palace library, the people who compile the book are telling us that this is a collection of human wisdom.

  Marina Warner

  Book, People, Library

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The secular humanist, although he would never dream of committing the social faux pas of calling a black man a negro, feels perfectly free to castigate Christians and their leaders in any way he likes.

  Frank Schaeffer

  Christian, Dream, Men

  Frank Schaeffer (1982). “A time for anger: the myth of neutrality”, Good News Publishers

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• I'm a humanist. I'm an observer. I have a very scientific mind. I believe metaphysics and science absolutely blended are more the truth for me. It doesn't work just believing in what somebody says.

  Meredith Brooks

  Believe, Mind, Metaphysics

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• I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic.

  Michael Shermer

  Atheist, Believe, Mean

  "Why I Am An Atheist" by Michael Shermer, michaelshermer.com. June 23, 2005.

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• Bertrand Russell started off as a mathematician and then degenerated into a philosopher and finally into a humanist; he went downhill rapidly!

  Gregory Chaitin

  Philosopher, Mathematician

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• And I guess, I guess it's a humanist film. It's not really a spiritual film and it's, you know, it's saying that we're all one tribe of humans and we're on this little rock, floating through the universe and (Amenabar) has these (transitional shots of) POVs where you see humans like ants.

  Rachel Weisz

  Spiritual, Rocks, Ants

  "Rachel Weisz Interview AGORA: The Oscar-Winning Star gets Deep about Religion, Movie Blogs and her Desire to be in J.J. Abrams' STAR TREK Sequel". Interview with Ron Messer, collider.com. May 28, 2010.

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• To define twentieth-century humanism briefly, I would say that it is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity in this natural world and advocating the methods of reason, science, and democracy.

  Corliss Lamont

  Philosophy, Humanity, Democracy

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• If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which their countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Country, Islam

  Salman Rushdie (2008). “Step Across This Line”, p.219, Random House

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• I consider myself spiritual and I'm married to a man who is both an atheist and a humanist, and my kids have been raised with the traditions of different religions, but they do not go to church or temple. My feeling is that everyone should be able to believe what they want or need to believe.

  Jodi Picoult

  Spiritual, Atheist, Believe

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