“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civili-zation is the story of what happened on the banks.”
Will Durant
more infosource: “More History from the Will Durants: Spry Old Team Does It Again,” by Jim Hicks, Life, October 18, 1963, 92.
view on Google Books
category: civilization, history, humanity
medium: magazine profile
“Nothing restores my faith in humanity like a successful Craigslist exchange.”
Jonah Lehrer
more infosource: Twitter, 1:11 PM, Feb 25, 2010 via Twitterrific
category: Craigslist, faith, honesty, humanity
medium: social media
“Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper. To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.”
Alain de Botton
more infosource: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (New York: Pantheon, 2009), 237.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: humanity, information, morning, newspaper, seashell, sleep
medium: nonfiction
“The good Earth—we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 122.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: cheap, earth, environment, global warming, humanity, lazy
medium: nonfiction
“Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”
Kurt Vonnegut
more infosource: Timequake (New York: Berkley Books, 1998), 219.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: earth, humanity, life
medium: fiction
via: Kevin Lippert“Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.”
Atul Gawande
more infosource: The Checklist Manifesto (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 67.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: collaboration, fallible, humanity, imperfect
medium: nonfiction
“You must give something to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for those who have need of a man’s help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.”
Albert Schweitzer
more infosource: Schweitzer: A Biography, by George N. Marshall and David Poling (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 299.
view on Google Books
category: humanity, service, volunteer
medium: biography
“It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.”
E. B. White
more info
humanity