What white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro reality - the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for...

I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but...

Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and damned flowing through Europe is my family. And there is no time in the future in which they might be...

I hate the bigotry you believe in. But I'll try not to hate you.

He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he's wrong. War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

Compassion quickly arises from noble hearts that feel the sharp stings suffered by others as if in their own flesh.

Brave young American men climbed the rugged slopes of Korean mountains and fought in homesickness and desperate weariness for the sake of a people strange to them and for reasons they scarcely...

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others....

One does not have to be a priest to be a man!

No one can tell the difference between a clone and a human. That's because there isn't any difference. The idea of clones being inferior is a filthy lie.

Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have...

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find.

There is her heart. I've never seen one beating.I had no idea they moved so much. You put your hand on your heart and you picture something pulsing slightly but basically still, like a hand on a...

She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people....

For God's sake, let us be mennot monkeys minding machinesor sitting with our tails curledwhile the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can...

I remembered the old doctor, - "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.

How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

Only vulgar people boast about how happy they are

The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

What humanity wants most is crude sensation.Really? I thought what humanity wanted most was dignity.

We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and...

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one...

Inhuman, V says. But that's an easy word. We've been doing that sort of thing to each other all through history, back past the Pyramids. Humans are inhuman, whether it's by direct action or by...

To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle,...

The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry.

Oh, mankind, race of crocodiles! How well I recognize you down there, and how worthy you are of yourselves!

It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

{mother} belonged to a realm of other creatures: smaller, lighter, more easily blown away.

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.