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Humanism is the worship of mankind

• Humanism – the worship of humankind. Yuval Noah Harari
• Democracy without God is man’s worship and elevation of himself and his own intelligence or humanism, where man becomes his own measure for morality, judgment, and justice. Myles Munroe
• The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Yuval Noah Harari
• Atheists place all importance on facts, I place all importance on people. Abhijit Naskar
• Civilization starts with us, so if we want to build a just and humane civilization, we must be just and humane ourselves. Look in the mirror – what do you see – do you see an animal that looks like a human – or do you see something more – look deeply – look beyond the shape and everything external – and you’ll witness an entire civilization in the shape of a human. Abhijit Naskar
• 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
• Humanism: A philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason. Merriam Webster

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In humanism, humans have replaced Gods

• Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions, the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods. While theists worship theos (Greek for ‘god’), humanists worship humans. The founding idea of humanist religions such as liberalism, communism and Nazism is that Homo sapiens has some unique and sacred essence that is the source of all meaning and authority in the universe. Everything that happens in the cosmos is judged to be good or bad according to its impact on Homo sapiens. Yuval Noah Harari
• Secular humanism arose within a Judaeo-Christian culture and inherited from Christianity a belief in the unique importance of human life, together with a faith in future salvation. Secular humanism is in many ways a Christian heresy, in which man has replaced God. Rupert Sheldrake

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In humanism, mankind places itself at the center of the stage as ‘‘the absolute.’’

• Modernism rejects the primacy of absolute and ultimate truth transcending the human order and descending upon the human realm from the Divine Order. It places man himself at the center of the stage as ‘‘the absolute.’’ In a sense it absolutizes the human being in his or her earthly reality. Usually it does not come out and say so explicitly, but that is what it really means; that is, it takes the absolute away from God and puts it on the human plane, and therefore makes human reason, human perceptions, human interests the criteria of reality, of knowledge, of the truth, of the goal of human life. Therefore, as a consequence it substitutes the significance of the temporal and the transient for the abiding and the eternal. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
• The true human being is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities. David Zindell
• We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people. Daniel Webster

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We believe we are our own Gods…

• When we know what God is, we shall be gods ourselves. George Bernard Shawo
• You are your own devil, you are your own God, You fashioned the paths that your footsteps have trod, And no one can save you from error or sin, Until you shall hark to the Spirit within. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my being. Catherine Adorna of Genoa
• We are as Gods and might as well get good at it. Stewart Brand
• You are the God-being that is here to create life, to breathe soul into your body, to walk this world as your own source of power, love, worth and life. Joy Page
• Because Man is God, and God is Man, the world is nothing but the world of Man – or Woman. Paul Virilio
• For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. Charles Bukowski
• If we look at it more from a philosophical standpoint, these foundations of atheism and secular humanism believe that you are your own God. Ted Cruz
• God may arrive late if called, but not you, for you are the only living God on earth, and all others are mere imitations of your image. Abhijit Naskar

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… approaching a godlike omniscience through science and technology

• But few atheists believe in materialism alone. Most are also secular humanists, for whom a faith in God has been replaced by a faith in humanity. Humans approach a godlike omniscience through science. God does not affect the course of human history. Instead, humans have taken charge themselves, bringing about progress through reason, science, technology, education and social reform. Rupert Sheldrake
• Only much later did some people dare say that humans are sacred in their own right, and that God doesn’t exist at all. Yuval Noah Harari
• What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. William Shakespeare
• In Italy the artist is a god. Now if the artist is a god, the scientist is likewise a god. Josef Albers
• Modern science and technology give humans powers that far exceed those of the ancient gods. Yuval Noah Harari
• We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.  John Steinbeck
• God is present even in the Newton myth: Newton himself is God. When biotechnology, nanotechnology and the other fruits of science ripen, Homo sapiens will attain divine powers and come full circle back to the biblical Tree of Knowledge. Archaic hunter-gatherers were just another species of animal. Farmers saw themselves as the apex of creation. Scientists will upgrade us into gods. Yuval Noah Harari
• [Humanism] has no use for gods, because modern science and technology give humans powers that far exceed those of the ancient gods. Yuval Noah Harari
• We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands. Carl Sagan

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If not already Gods, we are certainly God in potential

• Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality. Rajneesh
• Does God exist? Well, I would say, ‘not yet’. Ray Kurzweil
• I lovingly nurture the god in embryo that lies deep within my soul. I awaken myself to the deep stillness that lies deep within my heart. Deepak Chopra
• We are gods in the chrysalis. Dale Carnegie
• When I say that you are gods and goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite. Rajneesh
• The purpose of my life is to make immortal Gods of out of every mortal human. Abhijit Naskar
• The purpose of my life is to make Gods out of every human. Abhijit Naskar

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Humanism is a belief in humans and their potential

• I don’t believe in God. I believe in man — in his strength, his possibilities, and his reason. Gherman Titov
• Some say God is living there in space. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect angels or gods… I don’t believe in man – his strength, his possibilities, his reason.  Gherman Titov
• A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race. M. Forster

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Humanism is a belief that mankind is the master of its own destiny

• A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind. Daisaku Ikeda
• It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning. Gene Roddenberry
• The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world. George Eliot
• Humanism is the creed of those who believe that in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men’s fates are in their own hands – a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith. John Galsworthy
• If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone. Robert Green Ingersoll
• Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud. Rosa Luxemburg

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Humanism is a belief we can take control of our own problems without a need for God

• Don’t appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he’s not at home and never was at home, and couldn’t care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy- live or die- is strictly your business and the universe doesn’t care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it- ‘Thou art God!’ Robert A. Heinlein
• We think we are going to get security, strength, wisdom, happiness from the outside. We always hope but never realize our hope. Never does any help come from the outside. There is no help for man. None ever was, none is, and none will be. Why should there be? Are you not men and women? Are the lords of the earth to be helped by others? Are you not ashamed? You are spirit. Pull yourself out of difficulties by yourself! Save yourself by yourself! There is none to help you — never was. To think that there is, is sweet delusion. It comes to no good. Swami Vivekananda
• Why does God not intervene?” points right back at us, because God is our very own self. Hence we must look to ourselves to solve the problem. Pulkit Mathur
• Turn to yourselves rather than to your Gods or to your idols. Find what hides in yourselves; bring it to the light; show yourselves! Hakim Bey
• We humanists celebrate humanity. We want humanity to survive. We recognize that if humanity does survive it will be only by its own efforts. Never can we sit back and wait for miracles to save us. Miracles don’t happen. Sweat happens. Effort happens. Thought happens. And it is up to us humanists to help to expend our sweat, our effort, and our thought. Then there will be hope for the world. Isaac Asimov

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Humanism is a belief we can turn things around for ourselves…

• Humanism is the only – I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history. Edward W. Said
• The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy. Polly Toynbee
• If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable. E. O. Wilson
• To build a civilized society is no work of the weak-hearted or the prejudiced, it’s the work of the living Gods, it’s the work of humans without borders. And to build these humans is the work of my life. Abhijit Naskar
• We are new humans, there’s nothing we cannot do. Abhijit Naskar
• Wake up and soar my centurions – the unification and ascension of our humankind are in your hands now. Abhijit Naskar

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…and thus bring about our own salvation

• Secular humanism makes atheism palatable because it surrounds it with a reassuring faith in progress rather than provable facts. Instead of redemption by God, humans themselves will bring about human salvation through science, reason and social reform. Rupert Sheldrake
• Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For Humanism, salvation is an act of the state. R.J. Rushdoony

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Humanism is a belief that the universe is indifferent but mankind is its own light

• There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don’t care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don’t have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!  Eliezer Yudkowsky
• There is light in the world, and it is us! Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Let us each take up our flaming torches and mount as the blazing fireballs of light that we are and let’s burn the skies and leave it with deep scars and let them be our signatures upon eternity as we go forth! JoyBell C.
• Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ And no longer can a tyrant say, ‘God wants this or that to happen, and anyone who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain! Kurt Vonnegut
• Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it. Tom Flynn

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Humanism is a belief we are the source of our own meaning

• Life has no meaning a priori. It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose. Jean-Paul Sartre
• Before you come alive, life is nothing; it ‘s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose. Jean-Paul Sartre
• Humanism says people can find purpose in life and maximize their long-term happiness by developing their talents and using those talents for the service of humanity. Humanists believe that this approach to life is more productive and leads to a deeper and longer-lasting satisfaction than a hedonistic pursuit of material or sensual pleasures that soon fade. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge-an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth. Steven Schafersman
• Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. Yuval Noah Harari
• We don’t need any gods to limit our power and give us meaning – the free choices of customers and voters supply us with all the meaning we require. Yuval Noah Harari
• It is impossible to sustain order without meaning. The great political, artistic and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. We are not actors in a divine drama, and nobody cares about us and our deeds, so nobody sets limits to our power – but we are still convinced our lives have meaning. Yuval Noah Harari

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Humanism is a belief in the sanctity of human life…

• No constitution in the world is worth more than human life. Abhijit Naskar
• Humanism sanctifies human needs, whims and wishes, while disregarding everything else. Yuval Noah Harari
• Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, ‘What exactly is so sacred here?’ Yuval Noah Harari
• Industrial farming has no real interest in animals, which don’t share the sanctity of human nature. Yuval Noah Harari

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…and human dignity

• The overriding need is “to develop a new Planetary Humanism” that will seek to preserve human rights and enhance human freedom and dignity and will emphasize our commitment “to humanity as a whole.” The underlying ethical principle “is the need to respect the dignity and worth of all persons in the world community.” Thinkers as diverse as Peter Singer and Hans Küng also emphasize the need for a new global ethic beyond nationalistic, racial, religious, and ethnic chauvinism. Paul Kurtz
• Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an ‘It.’ This is so because each and every human being – you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner – is precious. Scott Peck
• There is something simply beautiful and simply innocent, in being human. It is just so innocent and beautiful. I love it. JoyBell C.

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Humanism believes fervently in the sanctity of reason and science

• 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
• 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
• 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
• The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us. E. O. Wilson
• Humanism is the commitment to the use of reason in human affairs, applied in the service of compassion. Hans Jürgen Eysenck
• I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race. Michael Tippett

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Humanism believes in the sanctity of human systems

• Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today’s speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. Francis August Schaeffer,
• The new “gods” ought to give us a bit of hope — they’ve helped us re-discover the old, paradoxical idea that complex systems are simultaneously inside of us and bigger than us. They’re the product of our stories, our drives, our aspirations, our love. With that in mind, I’m frustrated by how much time and energy we waste pretending that we can escape from the systems we’re embedded in. Aaron Z. Lewis
• In our globalized economy, even small local actions have strange and unpredictable ripple effects. It’s like the butterfly effect, but supercharged by the internet and international supply chains. Tim Urban

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Humanism believes in the sanctity of human institutions and corporations

• While the other gods we’ve explored in this post are all-encompassing, the egregore concept makes room for a plurality of gods. There are as many egregores as there are groups of people. From small cliques to large corporations, egregores come in all shapes and sizes. They interact with one another via human “representatives”, each of whom embody and enact the interests of the egregores they are a part of. Aaron Z. Lewis
• Last, but not least is my favorite modern-day god concept. Coined by the 19th-century French poet Victor Hugo, an “egregore” is a collective intelligence that’s created when people come together around a common purpose. A corporate bureaucracy is a type of egregore: it’s distributed across the minds of the many people it employs, but it’s not entirely controlled by any one of them. Aaron Z. Lewis
• A corporation is indeed made up of people, but perhaps it makes more sense to think about it as a hive-mind. Using a combination of man-power and computers, corporations can accomplish things that no single person ever could. Sometimes, it even outlives the people who created it. You can’t point to it in physical space because it’s more than just the office building it occupies. Aaron Z. Lewis
• Egregoric entities, whether gods or demons or dictators at the center of a cult of personality, are powerful entities, even as they are imaginary — wholly created by and consisting of thoughts, speech, and behaviors. The human mind is a powerful entity, and becomes more powerful in coordination with others. Aaron Z. Lewis

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Humanism believes in the sanctity of education…

• Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings? Charles Francis Potter
• The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them. Stefan Zweig
• Modern humanist education believes in teaching students to think for themselves. It is good to know what Aristotle, Solomon and Aquinas thought about politics, art and economics; yet since the supreme source of meaning and authority lies within ourselves, it is far more important to know what you think about these matters. Yuval Noah Harari

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…and the sanctity of open-mindedness

• Humanism has many meanings, but what attracts me about it is that it encourages men and women to take a broad view of situations and to think about them from on-the-ground perspectives rather than through theoretical and conceptual lenses. Joseph Badaracco

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Humanism believes in the sanctity of technology

• We made a big mistake 300 years ago when we separated technology and humanism. It’s time to put the two back together. Michael Dertouzos
• We want to stand at the intersection of computers and humanism. Steve Jobs

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Humanism believes in the sanctity and power of human virtues…

• The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility. Lionel Trilling
• 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
• Humanism believes that the individual attains the good life by harmoniously combining personal satisfactions and continuous self-development with significant work and other activities that contribute to the welfare of the community. Corliss Lamont
• A humanist is someone who does the right thing even though she knows that no one is watching. Dick McMahan
• We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept. Philippe Starck
• Humanism is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity, of application of new ideas of scientific progress for the benefit of all. Linus Pauling
• Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life. A.C. Grayling
• Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace. Simone Weil
• The idea – the core idea of humanism – is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them. Stanley Fish
• The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility. Lionel Trilling
• To define twentieth-century humanism briefly, I would say that it is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity in this natural world and advocating the methods of reason, science, and democracy. Corliss Lamont
• Secular humanism is a nonreligious worldview rooted in science, philosophical naturalism (rather than supernaturalism), and humanist ethics. Instead of relying on faith, doctrine, or mysticism, secular humanists use reason, compassion, and human experience to find solutions to human problems. Secular humanists promote values including integrity, benevolence, fairness, and responsibility, and believe that with reason, good will, and the free exchange of ideas, we can build a better world for ourselves and for future generations.

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…particularly the virtue of duty and service to mankind…

• If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist. Daisaku Ikeda
• Humanism is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity, of application of new ideas of scientific progress for the benefit of all. Linus Pauling

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…and the power and sacredness of human love and compassion

• I do believe in humanism, and I believe that we should treat each other with respect and care and look after each other. All human beings should have an equal chance to survive in society, and inequality is a big problem in society. Stellan Skarsgard
• To embrace humanism is to embrace the concept that caring for our fellow human beings is our highest calling. Sean Faircloth
• Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Albert Einstein
• For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
• When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. Jimi Hendrix
• 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
• Any man filled with empathy is capable of gaining valuable insights on the human condition through the suffering of others. You do not need to suffer to know suffering, but you need empathy first to identify and feel the suffering of others around you. Suzy Kassem
• Concern for the people should burn like the fire of God in your veins. Abhijit Naskar
• To be a human it’s necessary to carry out the requirements of civilization and the requirements of civilization are reason and compassion. Abhijit Naskar
• Till the fire of love engulfs your whole being, the human in you will keep sleeping. Abhijit Naskar
• In our love for the people we are born again, not as petty animals fighting the trivial battles of tribalism, but as genuine humans – humans who can think – humans who can feel – humans who can act. Abhijit Naskar
• When you can’t live a day without helping others – when you can’t breathe without watching someone smile because of you – when you can’t even taste the food until you know that someone is able to put food on the table for their family because of your kindness – that day you’d know what it is to be human. Abhijit Naskar
• Life is either an instrument of love or nothing at all. Abhijit Naskar
• The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection. Irving Babbitt
• Three key humanist virtues are courage, cognition, and caring – not dependence, ignorance, or insensitivity to the needs of others. Paul Kurtz
• Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. American Humanist Association
• 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 Babbit
• Humanism is the light of my life and the fire in my soul. It is the deep felt conviction, in every fiber of my being that human love is a power far transcending the relentless, onward rush of our largely deterministic cosmos. All human life must seek a reason for existence within the bounds of an uncaring physical world, and it is love coupled with empathy, democracy, and a commitment to selfless service which undergirds the faith of a humanist.  Bette Chambers

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Humanists believe in concentrating on the upliftment and well-being of humanity…

• Humanism believes that the individual attains the good life by harmoniously combining personal satisfactions and continuous self-development with significant work and other activities that contribute to the welfare of the community. Corliss Lamont
• Whether there is a supreme almighty, is no concern of mine, all I care about is the upliftment of the humans by the humans – by me, you and by every single creature who calls themselves human. Abhijit Naskar
• I believe the exploration and enrichment of the human spirit is what determines our very humanity. Such enrichment provides an inner compass that can lead civilizations to greatness. Daisaku Ikeda
• An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men. Sandra Cisneros
• Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person’s right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor’s injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female. Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

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…rather than the welfare of supposed Gods

• I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won’t have to have faith in gods. Ruth Hurmence Green
• Humanism is a philosophy of life that considers the welfare of humankind – rather than the welfare of a supposed God or gods – to be of paramount importance. Humanism maintains there is no evidence a supernatural power ever needed or wanted anything from people, ever communicated to them, or ever interfered with the laws of nature to assist or harm anyone. Humanism’s focus, then, is on using human efforts to meet human needs and wants in this world. Joseph C. Sommer

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Humanism encourages us to regard each other as members of one human family

• Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say “What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?” If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
• For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity. Christopher Dawson
• The concept of world peace is nothing but a publicity stunt – for there to be real peace we actually have to stop living as tribal savages and start living as universal humans whose family are the humans, whose religion are the humans, whose philosophy are the humans. Abhijit Naskar
• The experience of humanism is that ‘nothing human is alien to me’; that I carry within myself all of humanity; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and the saint. I am the child and the adult. I am the man who lived 100000 years ago and the man who will live 100000 years from now. Erich Fromm
• Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one. Suzy Kassem
• Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one. Suzy Kassem
• I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism. Judy Chicago
• Today it is not alive. What, then, is this experience of humanism? With the above survey I have tried to show you that the experience of humanism is that — as Terence expressed it — “Nothing human is alien to me”; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and I am the saint. I am the child and I am the adult. I am the man who lived a hundred thousand years ago and I am the man who, provided we don’t destroy the human race, will live hundred thousand years from now. Erich Fromm
• I support all people on earth
  who have bodies like and unlike my body,
  skins and moles and old scars,
  secret and public hair,
  crooked toes. I support
  those who have done nothing large.
  – Naomi Shihab Nye

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Humanism encourages us to embrace life because we only get one

• Humanism inspires a lot of enthusiasm for everyday life and urges people to be better to one another, to work towards a better future and a common good. If I believed there was an afterlife I would have so much less motive for filling this life with every experience that is offered up to me. Stephen Fry
• “Humanism” is to be human, to think, to analyze, and to probe. To respond and to be stimulated by all living things – beasts, fowl, and fishes. To respond through touch, sight, smell, and sound to all things in nature – both organic and inorganic-to colors, shapes, and textures – to not only look at a blade of grass but to really see a blade of grass. These things, to me, are what life and living are all about. I would call it “Humanism.” Jacob Lawrence

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Humanism encourages us to look after the planet because it’s our only home

• The Humanist has a feeling of perfect at-homeness in the universe. He is conscious of himself as an Earth child. There is a mystic glow in this sense of belonging. Memories of his long ancestry still ring in muscle and nerve, in brain and germ cell. Rooted in millions of years of planetary history, he has a secure feeling of being at home, and a consciousness of pride and dignity as a bearer of the heritage of the ages and a growing creative center of cosmic life. Lloyd and Mary Morain

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Humanism believes it is the true saviour of civilisation and bringer of human progress

• The forces of internationalism, humanism and solidarity will have to be victorious, or soon there will be nothing left of the human race. Andre Vltchek
• Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society. John Ralston Saul
• From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all. Louis Kronenberger

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Humanism especially believes in the sanctity of human experiences and feelings as the source of our own personal truth…

• The heart is what is important.” There is nothing more vulnerable, nothing more corruptible than the human mind; nor is there anything as powerful, steadfast and ennobling. Daisaku Ikeda
• If we wish to know the answer to any ethical question, we need to connect to our inner experiences and observe them with the utmost sensitivity. In practice, this means that we seek knowledge by spending years collecting experiences, and sharpening our sensitivity so we can understand these experiences correctly. What is ‘sensitivity’? It means two things. Firstly, paying attention to my sensations, emotions and thoughts. Second, allowing these sensations, emotions and thoughts to influence me. Granted, I shouldn’t allow every passing breeze to sweep me away. Yet I should be open to new experiences and permit them to change my views, my behaviour and even my personality. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’. Yuval Noah Harari
• No culture in history has ever given such importance to human feelings, desires and experiences. The humanist view of life as a succession of experiences has become the founding myth of numerous modern industries, from tourism to art. Yuval Noah Harari
• There was never any need of some godlike wizard in order to become sensitive, wise or brave. You just need to follow the yellow brick road and open yourself up to whatever experiences come your way. Yuval Noah Harari
• All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanism holds that experiences occur inside us, and that we ought to find within ourselves the meaning of all that happens, thereby infusing the universe with meaning. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanists hold that ethical values are relative to human experience and need not be derived from theological or metaphysical foundations. Paul Kurtz
• For centuries humanism has been convincing us that we are the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will is therefore the highest authority of all. Instead of waiting for some external entity to tell us what’s what, we can rely on our own feelings and desires. From infancy we are bombarded with a barrage of humanist slogans counselling us: ‘Listen to yourself, be true to yourself, trust yourself, follow your heart, do what feels good.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau summed it all up in his novel Émile, the eighteenth-century bible of feeling. Rousseau held that, when looking for life’s rules of conduct, he found them ‘in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad.’ Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’. Yuval Noah Harari
• In ethics, the humanist motto is ‘if it feels good – do it’. In politics, humanism instructs us that ‘the voter knows best’. In aesthetics, humanism says that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. Yuval Noah Harari
• Today humanists believe that the only source for artistic creation and aesthetic value is human feelings. Yuval Noah Harari
• As the source of meaning and authority relocated from the sky to human feelings, the nature of the entire cosmos changed. The exterior universe – hitherto teeming with gods, muses, fairies and ghouls – became empty space. The interior world – hitherto an insignificant enclave of crude passions – became deep and rich beyond measure. Angels and demons were transformed from real entities roaming the forests and deserts of the world into inner forces within our own psyche. Heaven and hell too ceased to be real places somewhere above the clouds and below the volcanoes, and were instead interpreted as internal mental states. Yuval Noah Harari
• What is ‘sensitivity’? It means two things. Firstly, paying attention to my sensations, emotions and thoughts. Second, allowing these sensations, emotions and thoughts to influence me. Granted, I shouldn’t allow every passing breeze to sweep me away. Yet I should be open to new experiences and permit them to change my views, my behaviour and even my personality. Yuval Noah Harari

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…including moral truth…

• Humanism offered an alternative. As humans gained confidence in themselves a new formula for acquiring ethical knowledge appeared: Knowledge = Experiences × Sensitivity. If we wish to know the answer to any ethical question, we need to connect to our inner experiences and observe them with the utmost sensitivity. In practice, this means that we seek knowledge by spending years collecting experiences, and sharpening our sensitivity so we can understand these experiences correctly. Yuval Noah Harari
• The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good and another to feel bad? How do we weigh these feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? Yuval Noah Harari

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…and any personal belief in God, if it exists

• If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner self tells me to believe in God – then I believe. I believe because I feel God’s presence, and my heart tells me He is there. But if I no longer feel God’s presence, and if my heart suddenly tells me that there is no God – I will cease believing. Either way, the real source of authority is my own feelings. So even while saying that I believe in God, the truth is that I have a much stronger belief in my own inner voice. Yuval Noah Harari

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Human feelings are believed to come from a wise place

• The scientists not only sanctified human feelings, but also found an excellent evolutionary reason to do so. After Darwin, biologists began explaining that feelings are complex algorithms honed by evolution to help animals make correct decisions. Our love, our fear and our passion aren’t some nebulous spiritual phenomena good only for composing poetry. Rather, they encapsulate millions of years of practical wisdom.  Yuval Noah Harari
• When you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. Your feelings are not infallible, of course, but they are better than most other sources of guidance. For millions upon millions of years, feelings were the best algorithms in the world.  Yuval Noah Harari

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Humanism also believes in the sanctity of our own inner voices

• Next came the humanists with an altogether new story: ‘Humans invented God, wrote the Bible and then interpreted it in a thousand different ways. So humans themselves are the source of all truth. You may read the Bible as an inspiring human creation, but you don’t really need to. If you are facing any dilemma, just listen to yourself and follow your inner voice.’ Humanism then gave detailed practical instructions on how to listen to yourself, recommending techniques such as watching sunsets, reading Goethe, keeping a private diary, having heart-to-heart talks with a good friend and holding democratic elections.    Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanism demands that we show some guts, listen to the inner messages even if they scare us, identify our authentic voice and then follow its instructions regardless of the difficulties. Yuval Noah Harari

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Humanism has become a kind of religion to many…

• Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself. Jacques Maritain
• In contemporary society secular humanism has been singled out by critics and proponents alike as a position sharply distinguishable from any religious formulation. Religious fundamentalists in the United States have waged a campaign against secular humanism, claiming that it is a rival “religion” and seeking to root it out from American public life.
• Our basic problem today is that we have two religions in conflict, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality. R.J. Rushdoony
• Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others. Hugo Black
• People should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion. Even secular humanism has great spiritual resources; it is almost like a religion to me. Dalai Lama
• This rising global humanism is, in fact, the rising into consciousness of a tribal god similar to the kind of tribal god that functioned in these pre-Hellenic societies. Terence McKenna
• Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God-not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has it’s own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions. Karen Armstrong

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…some argue the dominant religion of our modern world

• Humanism has become the dominant world religion. Yuval Noah Harari
• For 300 years the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. The attempt to gain immortality, bliss and divinity merely takes the long-standing humanist ideals to their logical conclusion. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanism has dominated the world for 300 years, which is not such a long time. The pharaohs ruled Egypt for 3,000 years, and the popes dominated Europe for a millennium. Yuval Noah Harari

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Many humanists regard themselves as secular or non-religious…

• Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy. Paul Kurtz
• From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism. Vidal Sassoon
• Humanism cannot survive on a purely secular platform. Roger E. Olson
• A recurring theme in the literature of secular humanism is the harsh assault upon traditional religion, especially Christianity. Guenter Lewy
• As my son Frankie put it, Humanism has changed the Twenty-third Psalm: They began – I am my shepherd. Then – Sheep are my shepherd. Then – Everything is my shepherd. Finally – Nothing is my shepherd. Francis Schaeffer

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…but believe humanism should be given the same recognition and exposure as religion

• I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events. Steven Pinker
• Secular humanism proposes … the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism … what is necessary for it to occur is a … New Enlightenment. Paul Kurtz
• I think the American Dream should be about a greater progressive legislation that allows for what I call a necessary future world of cooperational humanism. Bobby Seale
• Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind? Joyce Carol Oates

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Humanism can be dismissive of religious faith…

• Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world. Sam Harris
• Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers. Joss Whedon
• We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence. Sam Harris
• The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence. Sam Harris
• What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody’s beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. Sam Harris
• If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there’s a problem with his view of the world. Sam Harris
• What I’m asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives. Sam Harris
• To be a believer does not make you superior to others; but to be a humanist does make it so! Mehmet Murat ildan
• A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. David Hume
• Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence. Bertrand Russell

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…believing we should rather have faith in humanity

• Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers. Joss Whedon
• The central religious revolution of modernity was not losing faith in God; rather, it was gaining faith in humanity. humanity. It took centuries of hard work. Thinkers wrote pamphlets, artists composed poems and symphonies, politicians struck deals – and together they convinced humanity that it can imbue the universe with meaning. Yuval Noah Harari

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Humanism is a belief we can live good lives without religion…

• Humanism is the belief that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. British Humanist Association
• 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
• Humanism is an approach to life which encourages ethical and fulfilling living on the basis of reason and humanity, and rejects superstition and religion. The most immediate impact of living as a Humanist is that we believe this life is all there is – so what we do and the choices we make really count. Stephen Fry
• Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulating its naturalistic view of the nature. Paul Kurtz
• Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God — imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant — and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we’d be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave? Richard Dawkins

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…a belief that human decency and morals are far from reliant on religion

• 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
• Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. Kurt Vonnegut
• Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it. Christopher Hitchens
• Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes. Christopher Hitchens
• Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward people, but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical. Albert Schweitzer
• If we empower ourselves with responsibility over our actions, responsibility over our destinies and responsibility for directing and maintaining and creating our own ethical and moral frameworks, which is the most important thing really isn’t it because perhaps the greatest insult to humanism is this idea that mankind needs a god in order to have a moral framework. Stephen Fry
• Humanists hold that ethical values are relative to human experience and need not be derived from theological or metaphysical foundations. Paul Kurtz
• Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards and punishment in an afterlife. Kurt Vonnegut
• Reason, decency, tolerance, empathy and hope are human traits that we should aspire to, not because we seek reward of eternal life or because we fear the punishment of a supernatural being, but because they define our humanity. Only in recent years have I come to appreciate that all those qualities I have tried to espouse are precisely what defines Humanism. Jim Al-Khalili
• A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death. Albert Einstein
• If there is no god — and there isn’t — then we made up morality. And I’m very impressed. Jennifer Michael Hecht
• Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture – and very much to our credit. T H Huxley
• Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the secular Netherlands. Yuval Noah Harari

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Many humanists do not believe in a supernatural God…

• I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time. Isaac Asimov
• My century is unique in the history of men for two reasons. It is the first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God. And it is the century in which this religious rejection has taken a specifically political form…. Whittaker Chambers
• People ask me, Is yours an atheistic principle. Boldly I reply ‘No. Atheism is my tool. Humanism is my principle. Kamal Haasan
• When Nietzsche declared that God is dead, this is what he meant. At least in the West, God has become an abstract idea that some accept and others reject, but it makes little difference either way. In the Middle Ages, without a god I had no source of political, moral and aesthetic authority. I could not tell what was right, good or beautiful. Who could live like that? Today, in contrast, it is very easy not to believe in God, because I pay no price for my unbelief. I can be a complete atheist and still derive a very rich mixture of political, moral and aesthetic values from my inner experience.

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…believing mankind created God in its own image

• 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
• God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization. Christopher Hitchens

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According to humanism, mankind is the authority of truth…

• For thousands of years, humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then, during the modern era, humanism gradually shifted authority from deities to people. Yuval Noah Harari
• …for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing. Guillermo del Toro
• Next came the humanists with an altogether new story: ‘Humans invented God, wrote the Bible and then interpreted it in a thousand different ways. So humans themselves are the source of all truth. You may read the Bible as an inspiring human creation, but you don’t really need to. If you are facing any dilemma, just listen to yourself and follow your inner voice.’ Humanism then gave detailed practical instructions on how to listen to yourself, recommending techniques such as watching sunsets, reading Goethe, keeping a private diary, having heart-to-heart talks with a good friend and holding democratic elections. Yuval Noah Harari

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…rather than God

• [In the eyes of religion] while it was widely accepted that humans enjoy unique abilities and opportunities, they were also seen as ignorant and corruptible beings. Without external supervision and guidance, humans could never understand the eternal truth, but would instead be drawn to fleeting sensual pleasures. Any meaning that depends on human opinion [was seen as] necessarily fragile and ephemeral. Absolute truths, and the meaning of life and of the universe, must therefore be based on some eternal law emanating from a superhuman source… This view made God the supreme source not only of meaning but also of authority. Meaning and authority always go hand in hand. Whoever determines the meaning of our actions – whether they are good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly – also gains the authority to tell us what to think and how to behave.  Yuval Noah Harari

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Humanism does not believe in sin…

• Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There’s just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs. Phillip E. Johnson
• Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong with it. Yuval Noah Harari

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…but if there is such a thing as sin, it is to treat humans badly

• And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Terry Pratchett
• What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth. Friedrich Durrenmatt
• In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism. Shirley Chisholm
• Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. John Stuart Mill

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Some humanists are anti-religious…

• Many humanists in the West are stirred by a sense of outrage at what professed Christians, past and present, have done; and this makes them see their humanism as a kind of crusade, with the killing of Christianity as its prime goal. J. I. Packer
• 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
• Humanism rejects religion. It attributes nothing to the so-called supernatural. In this there is an awakened liberty that releases us from the shackles and servitude mentality of old superstitions so that we may realize our full potential. Yuval Noah Harari

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…while some assert humanism is compatible with spirituality…

• Maintaining spirituality and humanism are the keys to success. It’s a balance. Bikram Choudhury
• Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in the order of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being. Christopher Dawson
• Rationalists only managed to kill a very narrow and anthropomorphic conception of God. People who study complex systems started using new words to talk about god-like phenomena — metaphors that are more palatable to secular minds. I believe these new words can help scientifically-minded people better understand what it actually felt like to believe in God before science became a Thing. Aaron Z. Lewis
• Hinduism is synonymous with humanism. That is its essence and its great liberating quality. H. G. Wells
• What I was able to bring to the Christian part of it was the humanism and the humanistic point of view. It was the hook in terms of being able to make that adjustment. I wasn’t born Buddhist, so I do have some other traditions to pull from. Ron Glass
• Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology. Christopher Dawson
• When Jews left Judaism, they didn’t stop being religious. They simply swapped God-based Judaism for godless secular humanism and leftism. For left-wing Jews, Judaism is their ethnicity; leftism is their religion. Dennis Prager
• True humanism points the way toward God and acknowledges the task to which we are called, the task which offers us the real meaning of human life. Man is not the ultimate measure of man. Man becomes truly man only by passing beyond himself. Pope Paul VI
• I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist, go on down the line, and weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity — all the billions of people who have lived before us, who have loved and hurt. Diana Nyad

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…and especially compatible with a sense of wonder and curiosity at the universe

• Humans are pretty bad at reasoning about complex systems. In the past, our gods and demons allowed us to talk about phenomena that we didn’t fully understand. During the Enlightenment, we tried to kill them and explain everything in reductionist scientific terms. But it feels to me like we’ve come full circle. The great irony is that in our quest to disprove God, we’ve created a world that’s more magical and mysterious than Medieval people could’ve ever imagined. Aaron Z. Lewis
• Humanism considers the universe to be the result of an extremely long and complex evolution under immutable laws of nature. Humanists view this natural world as wondrous and precious, and as offering limitless opportunities for exploration, fascination, creativity, companionship, and joy. Because science cannot now and probably never will be able to explain the ultimate origin or destiny of the universe, I think Humanism can include more than atheists and agnostics. The lack of definite answers to these ultimate questions leaves room for reasonable people to hypothesize about the origin of the natural universe, and even to hope for some form of life beyond this one. Joseph C. Sommer
• Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked – as I am surprisingly often – why I bother to get up in the mornings.   To put it the other way round, isn’t it sad to go to your grave without wondering why you were born?   Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it? Richard Dawkins

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Humanism has had a great effect on economics and law

• Humanist approaches have had a deep impact on the economic field as well. In a free market the customer is always right. If customers don’t want it, it means that the car is no good. It doesn’t matter if all the university professors and all the priests and mullahs cry out from every lectern and pulpit that this is a wonderful car – if the customers reject it, it’s a bad car. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For Humanism, salvation is an act of the state. R.J. Rushdoony

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Humanism has also had a great impact on politics

• Our feelings provide meaning not only for our private lives, but also for social and political processes. When we want to know who should rule the country, what foreign policy to adopt and what economic steps to take, we don’t look for the answers in scriptures. Nor do we obey the commands of the Pope or the Council of Nobel Laureates. Rather, in most countries, we hold democratic elections and ask people what they think about the matter at hand. We believe that the voter knows best, and that the free choices of individual humans are the ultimate political authority. Yet how does the voter know what to choose? Theoretically at least, the voter is supposed to consult his or her innermost feelings and follow their lead. Yuval Noah Harari
• 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

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Humanism has brought about liberalism…

• The vote of the poor peasant counts for exactly the same as the billionaire’s. The liberal solution for social inequality is to give equal value to different human experiences, instead of trying to create the same experiences for everyone. Yuval Noah Harari
• According to liberalism, the peasant’s unique experiences are still just as valuable as the billionaire’s. That’s why liberal authors write long novels about the experiences of poor peasants – and why even billionaires avidly read such books. Yuval Noah Harari
• The core liberal package has changed surprisingly little. Liberalism still sanctifies individual liberties above all, and still has a firm belief in the voter and the customer. Yuval Noah Harari

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…and socialism…

• The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man. Erich Fromm
• Whereas in liberal politics the voter knows best, and in liberal economics the customer is always right, in socialist politics the party knows best, and in socialist economics the trade union is always right. Yuval Noah Harari
• Global peace will be achieved not by celebrating the distinctiveness of each nation, but by unifying all the workers of the world; and social harmony won’t be achieved by each person narcissistically exploring their own inner depths, but rather by each person prioritising the needs and experiences of others over their own desires. Yuval Noah Harari

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…and evolutionary humanism…

• Evolutionary humanism insists that conflict is something to applaud rather than lament. Conflict is the raw material of natural selection, which pushes evolution forward. Some humans are simply superior to others, and when human experiences collide, the fittest humans should steamroll everyone else. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humankind will gradually become stronger and fitter, eventually giving rise to superhumans. Evolution didn’t stop with Homo sapiens – there is still a long way to go. However, if in the name of human rights or human equality we emasculate the fittest humans, it will prevent the rise of the superman, and may even cause the degeneration and extinction of Homo sapiens. Yuval Noah Harari
• Who exactly are these superior humans who herald the coming of the superman? They might be entire races, particular tribes or exceptional individual geniuses.
• The experience of an Einstein or a Beethoven is far more valuable than that of a drunken good-for-nothing, and it is ludicrous to treat them as if they have equal merit.
• War is valuable and even essential. War allows natural selection free rein at last. It exterminates the weak and rewards the fierce and the ambitious. War exposes the truth about life, and awakens the will for power, for glory and for conquest. Nietzsche summed it up by saying that war is ‘the school of life’ and that ‘what does not kill me makes me stronger’. Yuval Noah Harari

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…as well as the conflict between them

• From 1914 to 1989 a murderous war of religion raged between the three humanist sects, and liberalism at first sustained one defeat after the other. Yuval Noah Harari
• By 1970 the world contained 130 independent countries, but only thirty of these were liberal democracies, most of which were crammed into the north-western corner of Europe.
• Liberal democracy was saved only by nuclear weapons. NATO adopted the MAD doctrine (Mutual Assured Destruction), according to which even conventional Soviet attacks would be answered by an all-out nuclear strike. ‘If you attack us,’ threatened the liberals, ‘we will make sure nobody comes out alive.’ Yuval Noah Harari

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In recent times, liberalism has risen back to the top…

• In 2016 the world is dominated by the liberal package of individualism, human rights, democracy and the free market. Yuval Noah Harari
• Once again people believe that if you just give individuals more freedom, the world will enjoy peace and prosperity. Yuval Noah Harari

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…though with the advent of the technology revolution (techno-humanism), it may be sowing the seeds of its own downfall

• The rise of humanism also contains the seeds of its downfall. While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism’s inherent flaws. If you start with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the ideal is close to realisation. Yuval Noah Harari
• Why might attempts to fulfil humanism result in its downfall? How would the search for immortality, bliss and divinity shake the foundations of our belief in humanity? What signs foretell this cataclysm, and how is it reflected in the day-to-day decisions each of us makes? And if humanism is indeed in danger, what might take its place? Yuval Noah Harari
• When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism. Yuval Noah Harari
• Techno-humanism agrees that Homo sapiens as we know it has run its historical course and will no longer be relevant in the future, but concludes that we should therefore use technology in order to create Homo deus – a much superior human model. Homo deus will retain some essential human features, but will also enjoy upgraded physical and mental abilities that will enable it to hold its own even against the most sophisticated non-conscious algorithms. Since intelligence is decoupling from consciousness, and since non-conscious intelligence is developing at breakneck speed, humans must actively upgrade their minds if they want to stay in the game. Yuval Noah Harari

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Some see humanism as hostile to religion…

• There are also two Christianities in the world today. There is (1) the Christianity of the New Testament, and there is (2) the Christianity of accommodation to modernism, egalitarianism, niceness, naturalism, pop psychology, secular humanism, relativism, subjectivism, individualism, “Enlightenment” rationalism or postmodern irrationalism. New converts to the first Christianity are constantly amazed and scandalized by finding many of their clergy to be in love with the second and in fear of the first. Peter Kreeft
• As humanism begins to dominate the state, the consequence is complete hostile annexation of the church or persecution by separation. Religion is then removed from the marketplace and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not toerlate any gods besides itself. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
• Secular Humanism is opposed to other religions; it actively rejects, excludes, and attempts to eliminate traditional theism from meaningful participation in the American culture. Harvey Cox

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…and as a competitor or even an enemy to war against

• It’s no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism. Billy Graham
• It is a war of light vs. darkness, of Christ vs. antichrist, the Word of God vs. secular humanism. There will be a winner and a loser!.. There is no compromise with the enemy. There is no neutrality in this war! John Hagee
• We’re going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America. Pat Buchanan
• Christians are supposed to love each other. Communists are supposed to share bonds with all proletarians and other communists. Every ideological group proclaims universality, and all of them bicker internally, never displaying unity except in the face of a common enemy. Humanism today is the common enemy of Christians. Gary North
• One can’t understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive – they’re reacting to what they call secular humanism Peter L. Berger
• The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society. Paul Weyrich
• It is blasphemous rebellion against God that marks the Antichrist as the final and logical expression of humanism. J. Vernon McGee
• We’re in a religious war and we need to aggressively oppose secular humanism; these people are as religiously motivated as we are and they are filled with the devil. Tim LaHaye
• We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism…we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today…our battle is with Satan himself. Jerry Falwell

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Some argue humanism has corrupted religion

• If we look at it more from a philosophical standpoint, these foundations of atheism and secular humanism believe that you are your own God. That leads us to something that unfortunately has crept into many churches across America, and it is what I call the Social Gospel. The social gospel, that could creep into something that is called Liberation Theology, which is a mixture of leftist, pseudo-Christianity with Marxism. Ted Cruz

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Some argue humanism aims to destroy religion without offering anything tangible to replace it with

• Not new Destroys religion without anything tangible to replace
• Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. William James
• There is nothing new about humanism. Billy Graham
• If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed. T. S. Eliot

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They argue humanism does not answer our most existential questions, especially our need for meaning…

• That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The modern man, finding that Humanism and Sex both fail to satisfy, seeks his happiness in Science … But Science fails too, for it is something more than a knowledge of matter the soul craves. Fulton J. Sheen

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…and does not solve our pressing problems…

• Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it. Francis Schaeffer
• The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the ‘human’ that present bourgeois society can muster. Terry Eagleton

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…and is therefore unsustainable

• Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it’s a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. “Atheistic humanism” became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today’s European Union, a kind of dehumamism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European. Mark Steyn

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Many who are religious assert that mankind is not God, and should not regard itself as such

• He who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God. B. Warfield
• We can never be gods, after all–but we can become something less than human with frightening ease. N.K. Jemisin
• A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. Gilbert K. Chesterton
• Man is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light. Robert Barclay
• Can we be gods, good Christian friends, with all of our selfishness and pride, our fears and suffering and violence? Heaven help us if you and I are the feeble and dying deities who alone are in charge of this world! Elizabeth Achtemeier
• Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, “secular humanism” is an oxymoron. Roger E. Olson
• There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan’s first temptation of Adam and Eve: “Ye shall be as gods.” (Gen. 3:5) Billy Graham

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They assert we are not special in our own right but because we are made in God’s image…

• Man is indeed lost, but that does not mean that he is nothing. We must resist humanism, but to make a man a zero is not the right way to resist it … [The] Christian position is that man is made in the image of God and even though he is now a sinner, he can do things that are tremendous – he can influence history for this life and the life to come, for himself and for others…From the biblical viewpoint, man is lost, but great. Francis Schaeffer
• Obviously, identification with God in no way means that we try to become God or pretend that we are God. Rare people who over-identify with the Deity—thinking themselves to be God or having a difficult time distinguishing themselves from God—need psychological assistance! Though we need to recognize our distinction from the Deity, that we were made in the image and likeness of God is a major premise of Judeo-Christian tradition. We believe that we possess some godlike qualities that we are expected to develop. Carolyn Jane Bohler
• Human beings are special, of higher dignity and worth than other animals, because they’re created in God’s own image and likeness. It’s actually true humanism. Roger E. Olson
• Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, “secular humanism” is an oxymoron. Roger E. Olson

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…and any belief to the contrary is false human pride

• Humanism is an overemphasis on human worth and ability, leading man to glorify himself instead of God…While its historical forms may vary, humanism inevitably leads people away from God and spiritual concerns. It promotes the false idea that man is good and that he is superior to God. Secular Humanism of the twentieth century altogether rejects belief in God and worships man as God. The pride of humanism will not go unpunished. David Fisher

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They argue than even human virtue is not inherent but God-given

• Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace. Simone Weil

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Some believe humanism is the source of many of our social ills…

• The ultra-right would have us believe that families are in trouble because of humanism, feminism, secular education, or sexual liberation, but the consensus of Americans is that what tears families apart is unemployment, inflation, and financial worries. Letty Cottin Pogrebin

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…and is leading to a falling away of morals

• The course of modern learning leads from humanism via nationalism to bestiality. Franz Grillparzer
• Secular humanism debases the human. Sinclair B. Ferguson
• Once you depart from the Ten Commandments, you have relativism, humanism, the abandonment of absolutes. You have anything. How long before child pornography is mainstream? Randall Terry

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Some argue humanism does not look out for the vulnerable and weak

• Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter. William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
• One has never said better how much “humanism”, “normality”, “quality of life” were nothing but the vicissitudes of profitability. Jean Baudrillard

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Humanism tends to have a fervid belief in its “rightness” which can breed intolerance

• I think the trouble with being a critical thinker or an atheist or a humanist is that you’re right. And it’s quite hard being right in the face of people who are wrong without sounding like a fuckwit. People go, ‘Do you think the vast majority of the world is wrong?’ Well, yes. I don’t know how to say that nicely, but, yes. Tim Minchin

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More arguments against humanism

• Humanism was not invented by man, but by a snake who suggested that the quest for autonomy might be a good idea. R. C. Sproul
• In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison. Theodor Adorno
• Some people are averse to competition and allow the words ‘co-operation’ and ‘humanism’ to drool from their mouths, apparently meaning thereby a large blob of protoplasmic homogeneity that lacks all individuality. It is not individuals and their liberty that concerns them, but rather some sort of well greased squirming mass that would seem to be analogous to the brains from which such amorphous ‘ideas’ emanate. Laurance Labadie
• This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained. J. V. Cunningham
• Humanism has tried to develop a positive philosophy and ethics, but sometimes this has been too anthropocentric, too confident of human superiority, too nervous of appearing even remotely like anything called “religion” or spirituality.

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We humans who art on Earth
Humanity is special
Our kingdom has come
Do what we innately know to be right
On earth, because that’s all there is
Share the bread we have
Try not to screw up
When others screw up, understand
We can’t have everything that tempts us
Deliver ourselves from evil
Because this is it, the Earth,
The power to do right and the glory to come if we do is ours
Now and forever,
Hu-man.
― Marcus Brigstocke

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My Name is Human (The Sonnet)
You asked, what’s my nation,
I say it’s humanity.
You asked, what’s my language,
I say it’s magnanimity.
You asked, what’s my culture,
I say it’s humaneness.
You asked, what’s my tradition,
I say it’s humbleness.
You asked, what’s my gender,
I say it’s fortitude.
You asked, what’s my religion,
I say it’s servitude.
You asked everything except my purpose.
I tell you now, it’s to unite the universe.
― Abhijit Naskar

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Who’s The Best (The Sonnet)

Of all nations on earth,
No nation is the best.
Of all religions on earth,
No religion is the best.
Of all cultures on earth,
No culture is the best,
Of all colors on earth,
No color is the best.
Of all genders on earth,
No gender is the best,
Of all philosophies on earth,
No philosophy is the best.
The world is diverse for us to be strong,
By walking together we’ll fly high and long.
― Abhijit Naskar

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