Human Beings

“What we need to make our first and primary task is and where our struggle ought to concentrate on is upon ourselves. We have to cleanse our thoughts from hatred; different political views and religion are our blessings, we have to conduct them with love. Even if there are disagreements arising from our differences, we should side with justice rather than injustice and correct our moral lenses. Justice should be our main principle; love and respect for all human beings ought to be our moral compass. This is our eternal job that cannot be completed and a work that needs to be always performed. It is our lifelong assignment.”

-Abiy Ahmed Ali, 15th Prime Minister of Ethiopia

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“The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called ‘patriotism.’
Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind. The door they opened leads to the hope that H. sapiens will survive indefinitely long, even longer than this solid planet on which we stand tonight. As a direct result of what they did, it is now possible that the human race will never die.
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong’s first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: ‘One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'”

-Robert Heinlein

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1000 Quotes Project

"A Selection of Curated Quotes"

1109 – “We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species.”

1076 – “Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, ‘that’s baaaaad.'”

996 – “A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given that billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.”

931 – Robert Heinlein on Patriotism

927 – “There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.”

926 – “In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to them had transcended the differences that divided them and had recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond.”

907 – “Consumerism has accustomed us to waste. But Throwing food away is like stealing it from the poor and hungry. | With the ‘Culture of Waste,’ human life is no longer considered the primary value to be respected and protected.”

846 – “When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”