Humanist quotes:

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  • As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs. -- Kurt Vonnegut
  • Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. -- Kurt Vonnegut
  • I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it. -- George Grosz
  • I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife. -- Kurt Vonnegut
  • For those who struggle with anti-pagan prejudices and stereotypes, Humanist Paganism might be a powerful educational tool. It can show that a pagan can be a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and enlightened person, and that a pagan culture can be artistically vibrant, environmentally conscious, intellectually stimulating, and socially just. -- Brendan Myers
  • I am Left Wing. I am a Humanist. -- Gaspar Noe
  • This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained. -- J. V. Cunningham
  • The only difference between a Religious Humanist and a Secular Humanist is what they do on Sunday. -- Fred Edwords
  • [John Calvin's] Humanist training makes him an excellent writer. What is more, he is as relevant today as he was 500 years ago. -- Oliver D. Crisp
  • The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart. -- Mark Thomas
  • 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
  • My family spans many world religions, ethnicities and nationalities. The truth is that I don't have one identity. I'm Scottish, British, European, Humanist, Atheist and in part at least, culturally Jewish. -- Sara Sheridan
  • I'm not sure I really am a Humanist. I describe myself as a rigorous agnostic, which means that you cannot declare as a matter of material truth something that is in fact a matter of spiritual belief. -- Margaret Atwood
  • 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
  • At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
  • There is no place in the Humanist worldview for either immortality or God in the valid meanings of those terms. Humanism contends that instead of the gods creating the cosmos, the cosmos, in the individualized form of human beings giving rein to their imagination, created the gods. -- Corliss Lamont
  • For the Humanist, . . . head and heart . . . must function together. . . . The constitution of the Phillips Exeter Academy reads: 'Though goodness without knowledge . . . is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous. . . . Both united form the noblest character and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.' -- Corliss Lamont
  • I'm a humanist. -- Lou Reed
  • Power is the flower of organization. -- A. Philip Randolph
  • Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic. -- Hu Shih
  • I consider myself a political revolutionary humanist. -- Bobby Seale
  • A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. -- David Hume
  • Ramadan is, in its essence, a month of humanist spirituality. -- Tariq Ramadan
  • I am a humanist not a feminist. There's a big difference. -- Lydia Lunch
  • The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values. -- Christopher Dawson
  • I don't consider myself as a feminist but more a humanist. -- Marjane Satrapi
  • I'm very much a humanist. I'm very much pro-choice. I'm very much politically correct. -- Sandra Bernhard
  • It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist. -- Taslima Nasrin
  • Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one. -- Christopher Dawson
  • Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one -- Christopher Dawson
  • I think I'm more of an absurdist than a satirist. I think I'm more of a - humanist? I hate to say it! -- Mike White
  • To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
  • They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen. -- John Ralston Saul
  • We have to claim anarchy and realize that systems have a life of their own that is anti-humanist. There is definitely an anti-humanist tendency in all systems. -- Terence McKenna
  • If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality. -- Joyce Carol Oates
  • Humanism involves far more than the negation of supernaturalism. It requires an affirmative philosophy . . . translated into a life devoted to one's own improvement and the service of all mankind. -- Corliss Lamont
  • There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
  • To me, a feminist belongs in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently. -- Suzanne Vega
  • To me, a feminist belong in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently. -- Suzanne Vega
  • A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. -- Bertrand Russell
  • A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of achieving full victory. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests. -- Isaac Asimov
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  • If you're going to do Shakespeare, do Shakespeare. There's a reason why he's been performed for hundreds of years. His words affect people on a very deep level. He's the true humanist. That all comes through his text, his words. -- Christian Camargo
  • Since Humanism as a functioning credo is so closely bound up with the methods of reason and science, plainly free speech and democracy are its very lifeblood. For reason and scientific method can flourish only in an atmosphere of civil liberties. -- Corliss Lamont
  • As with military campaigns, cultural warfare is always decided over the pragmatic problems of strategy, organization and resources. . . . The factions with the best strategies, most efficient organization, and access to resources will plainly have the advantage and very possibly, the ultimate victory. -- James Davison Hunter
  • I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence. -- Vladimir Putin
  • A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism. -- Irving Babbitt
  • With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. -- Noam Chomsky
  • On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known. -- John Stuart Mill
  • What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong. -- Patti Smith
  • Call it a case of observer bias on my part, but Humanist Paganism seems to be an emerging option for those who want to be part of the Pagan community, but who want to be a little more intellectual about their practices, and they really don't care about the 'woo' anymore. -- Brendan Myers
  • Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters. -- David Simon
  • 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
  • I think . . . that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals. . . . -- Corliss Lamont
  • 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
  • The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that a god or gods have created us and the recognition that we are responsible in part for our own destiny. Human beings can achieve this good life, but it is by the cultivation of the virtues of intelligence and courage, not faith and obedience, that we will most likely be able to do so. -- Paul Kurtz
  • I'm a humanist and an optimist. -- Stewart D. Friedman
  • I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist. -- Madonna Ciccone
  • I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race. -- Michael Tippett
  • The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist.' -- Charles M. Schulz
  • The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection. -- Irving Babbitt
  • I am a humanist not a feminist. Theres a big difference. -- Lydia Lunch
  • I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake. -- Edward Abbey
  • We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub. -- Mary McCarthy
  • I am a misanthropic humanist... Do I like people? They're great, IN THEORY. -- Bill Hicks
  • What we need to do is to humanize the scientist and simonize the humanist. -- C.P. Snow
  • No, not a feminist. I'm a humanist. I'm neither one side nor the other. -- David Attenborough
  • I'm a humanist at heart: at the end of the day, we are all human beings. -- Chet Faker
  • I would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist. -- Erich Fromm
  • We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept. -- Philippe Starck
  • The courts are merely a ruse, if you will, for humanist, atheistic educators to beat up on Christians. -- Pat Robertson
  • The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society. -- Paul Weyrich
  • Three key humanist virtues are courage, cognition, and caring - not dependence, ignorance, or insensitivity to the needs of others. -- Paul Kurtz
  • He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero. -- Tavis Smiley
  • Education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians. -- Jacques Ellul
  • 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
  • To be a 'believer' does not make you superior to others; but to be a 'humanist' does make it so! -- Mehmet Murat ildan
  • Women's fight for equal rights is essentially a humanist and peaceful struggle for true democracy, and a higher form of civilization. -- Leyla Zana
  • I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word. -- Gloria Steinem
  • We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head. -- Gary DeMar
  • The gospel shows a God far more holy than the legalist can bear, yet far more merciful than a humanist can conceive -- Timothy Keller
  • At one point, 'feminist' became a pejorative term. How did that happen? If you're a feminist, you're basically saying you're a humanist. -- Julianne Moore
  • Bertrand Russell started off as a mathematician and then degenerated into a philosopher and finally into a humanist; he went downhill rapidly! -- Gregory Chaitin
  • The removal of religion as history from our schoolbooks betrays the intellectual dishonesty of secular humanist educators and reveals their blind hostility to Christianity. -- Tim LaHaye
  • 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
  • I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead. -- Kurt Vonnegut
  • Only the free and personal man is a good citizen (realist), and even with the lack of particular (scholarly, artistic, etc)culture, a tasteful judge (humanist). -- Max Stirner
  • However, we all share the firm belief in the triumph of humanist and progressive values that mankind has achieved during its long history of struggle and creativeness. -- Tran ?uc Luong
  • However, we all share the firm belief in the triumph of humanist and progressive values that mankind has achieved during its long history of struggle and creativeness. -- Tran ?uc Luong
  • I never use the words HUMANIST or HUMANITARIAN, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature. -- Gregory Maguire
  • Atheism comes into rather a bad press and I suppose I'd rather describe myself as a humanist... I don't believe in God. I don't believe there is a God. -- Stephen Fry
  • I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South. -- Cornel West
  • Our humanist attitude should therefore throughout be to stress what we all have in common with each other and relegate quarrelsome religion to the private domain where it can do [less] harm. -- Hermann Bondi
  • Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict. -- Daniel Barenboim
  • What I am is a humanist before anything - before I'm a Jew, before I'm black, before I'm a woman. And my beliefs are for the human race - they don't exclude anyone. -- Whoopi Goldberg
  • Christian morality, laws rooted in the secular humanist belief that all consensual sexual acts are morally equal. That belief is anti-biblical and amoral; to codify it into law is to codify a lie. -- Pat Buchanan
  • To be sure about nonsense he had to be able to classify it, assign it to a family tree of liberal nonsense, humanist-humanitarian nonsense, academic nonsense, Protestant nonsense, Freudian nonsense and so on. -- Kingsley Amis
  • 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
  • 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 Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream. -- Salman Rushdie
  • I believe indeed that to rescue the humanist tradition of the last decades is of the utmost importance, and that Victor Serge is one of the outstanding personalities representing the socialist aspect of humanism. -- Erich Fromm
  • 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
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