A Collection of Quotes which Address Dignity and Humiliation
Linda Hartling
A world without humiliation dignifies us all!
Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
The measure of civilization/society is how they treat their weakest members:
Javier Perez de Cuellar
Let all bear in mind that a society is judged not so much by the standards attained by its more affluent and privileged members as by the quality of life which it is able to assure for its weakest members.
- H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar
...
Hubert Humphrey
The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.
- Hubert Humphrey
Donald C. Klein
"Appreciative Being" relates to life events via our human inherent capacity for experiencing awe and wonderment at being part of the universe.
- Donald C. Klein
Rachel Carson
If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
...
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
...
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
- Rachel Carson
Swami Satchidananda
Once, we were fine. We were all one.
Then, we de-fined ourselves: this person is white, this one is black, this one is English, this one is Russian and this one is Chinese.
Now, it's time to re-fine ourselves, and once again see that we are all one. So we were fine, we de-fined, now we must re-fine.
- Swami Satchidananda
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by descending itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., minister, political activist (1929-1968)
...
Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. ..... What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
- A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by James M. Washington. This quote comes from Martin Luther King Jr. 1967, SCLC presidential address.
- This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling.
...
I am sure that there are some things in our world to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.
- King's Challenge to the Nation's Social Scientists, APA Monitor Online, 30 (1, January 1999).
...
We will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., minister, political activist (1929-1968), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
...
Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963 WMU Speech
Arunduti Roy
For those of us who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation is becoming unbearable. Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.
- Arunduti Roy, San Francisco, September 2004
Albert Einstein
The most important human endeavor is
the striving for morality in our actions.
Our inner balance and even our very existence
depend on it. Only morality in our actions
can give beauty and dignity to life.
- Albert Einstein
Ezra Taft Benson
Pride is concerned with who is right,
Humility is concerned with what is right.
- Ezra Taft Benson, this quote was kindly provided by Kathryn Crawford, April 2005
George Bernard Shaw
We are made wise not by recollections of the past, but by our responsibility to the future.
- George Bernard Shaw , this quote was kindly provided by Anita Wenden, April 2005
Mualana Romi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
- Mualana Romi, this quote was kindly provided by Noor Akbar Khalil, April 2005
Thich Nhat Hanh
Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit.
- Thich Nhat Hanh in Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow
beings.
...
The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.
- Mahatma Gandhi in Non-Violence in Peace and War, Vol. 2, 1948.
...
"What do I think of Western Civilization?" "I think it would be a good idea."
...
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
...
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
...
First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win
Vaclav Havel
Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
-
Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright, president.
Elie Wiesel
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to only by other human beings.
- Elie Wiesel, Romanian-born
US writer.
Amin Maalouf
For the Americans, the English and some others, the English language is
of course the language of identity. But for the rest of mankind, that is to say more than nine-tenth of our contemporaries, it cannot fill that role, and it would be dangerous to try to make it so unless we want to produce hordes of people who are unhinged and disoriented, with personalities that are unbalanced. No one should be forced to become a mental expatriate every time he opens a book, sits down in front of a screen, enters into a discussion or thinks. People ought to be able to make their own modernity instead of always feeling they are borrowing it from others.
- Amin Maalouf in On Identity (2000), kindly provided to us by Bill Templer,
Rajamangala U niversity of Technology Lanna,
Phitsanulok, Thailand.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.
- Helen Keller
Gifford Pinchot
The vast possibilities of our great future wil become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for our future.
- Gifford Pinchot
Indira Gandhi
Wer die Faust ballt, kann nicht die Hand reichen.
[Those who make a fist, can't shake hands.]
- Indira Gandhi
Franz Kafka
Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht.
[Paths come into being by walking them.]
- Franz Kafka
Im Leben ist es wie beim Radfahren:
Kurz bevor es wie von selbst geht, scheint es uns am allerschwierigsten.
[In life, it is like with riding a bycicle: Just before it is easy, it appears to be impossible.]
- Anonymous
Es gibt keinen Mut ohne Angst.
[There is no courage without fear.]
- Anonymous
Anita Brookner
Humiliations, though ineradicable, must be repaired before they take root.
- Anita Brookner in Bay of Angels, 2001.
- This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling. Linda kindly writes (October 15, 2006):
I think this sentence accurately captures the enduring impact of humiliation while emphasizing the urgency to repair these breaks in
relationships. Like Brookner, I tend to believe that once a humiliation has occurred it cannot be completely erased. Without
timely intervention, victims become marked or haunted by these experiences - their humiliation takes root in their lives.
This quote lends additional support for Victoria's concept of "humiliation awareness." Perhaps humiliation awareness could not only reduce
new incidents of humiliation, it could prevent humiliation from taking root in people's lives.
Linda Hartling
For me, rather than thinking of human dignity as an individual, internal phenomena, I like to think of human dignity as a co-created experience. It is a experience developed through respectful connection (interpersonal, social, international, etc.) in which people feel known and valued, they feel that they matter... It is our responsibility to participate in the construction of this relational experience for all people.
- These are reflections sent to us by Linda Hartling on October 11, 2006.
Alliance of Civilisations
Peoples who feel that they face persistent discrimination, humiliation, or marginalisation are reacting by asserting their identity more aggressively.
- Alliance of Civilisations report, 13th November, 2006.
Minds are like parachutes: They only work when they are open!
- Anonyous
Bob Fuller
Humiliation is the most important obstacle to a post-predatory era for humankind.
- Bob Fuller
Victor Zurbel
To find that heart of compassion in brutal leaders and people in power situations is, I imagine, one of your greater challenges. Power by humiliation is an acquired disease, cultivated by thousands of years of pathological history. We need to find the antidote, which is compassion coupled with a firm, non-violen use of resistance and pressure.
- Victor Zurbel, November 30, 2006, in a personal message.
Jean Baker Miller, MD
• Authenticity is ever-evolving, not achieved at any one momentit is a
persons ongoing ability to represent herself in relationships more fully.
(1999)
• Authenticity and subordination are totally incompatible. (1976)
• The attempt at authenticity requires a clear and direct risk. (1976)
...
"What then is all this saying--and not saying? First that people have to participate in, and foster the development of other people, not once, in infancy, but all through life. The quality and quantity of such participation may vary with each stage of life but the necessity exists because development always requires participation of others. The very tendency to think of this activity as a static, almost one-shot (or one time period) phenomenon may indicate how far our culture has become removed from recognizing that this "need" exists at all times, not just when we are "dependent," but is a constant necessity in human development and human development is a necessity all through life."
- Jean Baker Miller, MD, (1976, October), Minutes - Board of Overseers. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College.
Peace
It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
-
unknown
Virginia Woolf
We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.
- Virginia Woolf, 1938
Vaclav Havel
I am not an optimist because I am not sure that everything ends well, nor am I a pessimist because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have meaning. It is not an estimate of the state of the world. It is something that you either have or you dont, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. It is a dimension of human existence.
- Vaclav Havel, Oslo Conference, The Anatomy of Hate, 1990
Buddha
Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain.
Happily the peaceful live, giving up victory and
defeat.
- Gautama Buddha
"You can look back to the past, just don't stare!"
-
Anonymous, related to us by Stephanie Heuer
George Bernard Shaw
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
-
George Bernard Shaw
Ludwig Robert
To the eagle spoke the dove: where thinking ceases, there begins faith. Right, he replied, but with this difference, where you already believe, I still reason."
"Zu dem Adler sprach die Taube:
Wo das Denken aufhört, da beginnt der Glaube;
Recht, sprach jener, mit dem Unterschied jedoch,
Wo du glaubst, da denk' ich noch."
- German
poet Ludwig Robert, often quoted by the father of Inge Danaher,
Peter Roehlen, as follows:
"Beyond knowledge comes belief" and the eagle replied "yes, but where you already believe, I still know."
Peter Roehlen
"Herr sei das Herz, der Verstand stehts Knecht, doch der tüchtigste Knecht, sei dem Herrn nur recht"
Translated: "Master be the heart, the mind always it's servant, however let only the most diligent servant be good enough for the master"
- Inge Danaher's father,
Peter Roehlen
Hafiz
I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew. The truth has shed so much of itself in me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman...
- Fourteenth century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz
Terri Swearingen
We are living on this planet as if we have another one to go to.
- Terri Swearingen; this quote is written in huge letters on a wall of qm, the Queensland Museum South Bank, in Brisbane, Australia, admired by Evelin on 10th August 2007
Marshall McLuhan
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
- Marshall McLuhan; this quote is written in huge letters on a wall of qm, the Queensland Museum South Bank, in Brisbane, Australia, admired by Evelin on 10th August 2007
Wringing your hands just slows you down from pushing up your sleeves!
- Anonymous
Abigail Van Buren
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
-
Abigail Van Buren
Sydney J. Harris
Theres no point in burying the hatchet if youre going to put up a marker on the site.
- Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Every person should have a special cemetery lot in which to bury the faults of friends and loved ones.
- Anonymous, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Rabindranath Tagore
The winds of grace are always blowing. It is you that must raise your sails.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, composer, philosopher (1861-1941), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
John Hancock
A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life.
- John Hancock, politician, Revolutionary leader (1737-1793), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
A man visits a Quaker meeting for the first time. After sitting in >silence for several minutes, he turns to his neighbor and asks, 'When does the service start?' to which his neighbor replies, 'After the meeting.'"
- Anonymous, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Lewis L. Dunningham
The greatest force for making people bigger and better than they are now is the belief in your heart and mind that they have the infinite potential for growth. Even when they fail us, we are to continue to carry and express the mental image of what they may become. To have someone believe in you, even whey you fail is the most blessed and creative force in the universe.
- Lewis L. Dunningham, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Buckminster Fuller
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
- Buckminster Fuller, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Walt Whitman
Re-examine all that you have been told...dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman, poet, journalist (1819-1892), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Julius and Augustus Hare
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
- Julius and Augustus Hare, British writers (1795-1855 and 1834-1903), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Bernard Shaw
This is the true joy in life, being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. - George - Bernard Shaw, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
Andrew Greeley
It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.
-
Andrew Greeley (Chicago Sun-Times, February 18, 2001)
Harold Laski
A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.
- Harold Laski, (1930)
Plutarch
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
-
Plutarch - Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 AD- 127 AD) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.
Woodrow Wilson
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.
-
Woodrow Wilson
James Baldwin
People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
- James Baldwin Biography - Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1924-1987
Prayer
I asked for Strength.........
And God gave me Difficulties to make strong.
I asked for Wisdom.........
And God gave me Problems to solve.
I asked for Prosperity.........
And God gave me Brain and Brawn to work.
I asked for Courage.........
And God gave me Danger to overcome.
I asked for Love.........
And God gave me Troubled people to help.
I asked for Favours.........
And God gave me Opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted
I received everything I needed
My Prayer has been answered
Karl Jaspers
Was der Mensch ist, das ist er durch die Sache, die er zur seinen macht.
- Karl Jaspers
It's far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.
- see a discussion at http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/09/20.html
Det er for sent å være pessimist nå.
- Finn Tschudi forklarer at dette er tittelen på en bok som er et festskrift til fredsaktivisten Ole Kopreitan på hans 70 årsdag, redaktør Knut Tønsberg, Emilia forlag.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Peace is the opposite of
security.
- "The Church and the People of the World," sermon delivered by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which
he delivered at the Ecumenical Conference of churches in Fano, on August 28,
1934. We thank Ralph Lentz for making us aware of this quote! See pictures from 2007 of his memorial in Breslau.
Worry is thought attached to the illusion of control.
- Anonymous
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
- Unknown
When the power of love is as strong as the love of power, then we will have peace.
- Unknown
Intelligence and humility are
compatible as long as humility comes first.
- Unknown
Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Humiliation is the disease, and dignity is the cure.
- Joanna Harcourt-Smith (listen to http://www.futureprimitive.org/GAIAlogues.html#latest)
Frank Barron
Never take a person's dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.
- Frank Barron
Kofi Annan
Whether its genocide or ethnic cleansing it always starts with humiliation of one individual.
-
Kofi Anan in ‘It Sits On Your Conscience,’ Newsweek, Feb 9, 2008.
Eric Hoffer
In times of change, the learners inherit the world, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
- Eric Hoffer
Richard Rorty
... [The liberal ironist] thinks that what unites her with the rest of the species is not a common language but just susceptibility to pain and in particular to that special sort of pain which the brutes do not share with the humans - humiliation...
- Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 92.
...
Rorty does believe in moral progress, understood as development “in the direction of greater human solidarity... the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation — the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us'.”
- Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 192.
It takes faith to leave the unfinished unfinished!
- related to us by Steve Kulich
Upton Sinclai
It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
Elik Elhanan
If indignity tears relationships
apart, dignity can put them back together.
-
Elik Elhanan, in "Learning to speak: I defeat my enemy when I make him my friend," Ode Magazine, May 2008 issue, p. 72. We thank Michael Nagler for making us aware of this quote.
Marcus Aurelius
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
- Marcus Aurelius
Paulo Freire
No one educates anyone, and nobody is self educated; all of us learn from each other, mediated by the world we live in.
- Paulo Freire
