Faith in Humanity

It’s easy to get discouraged about the world. There are a ready supply of assholes who think that they’re doing God’s work by killing people, be they recently in Paris, or today in Colorado Springs.1 So today I went looking for some good quotes, preferably about nonviolence since only those who repudiate all violence can help to stop it.2

Instead, I found a pretty great quote from Mahatama Gandhi on Wikiquote that helps put things into perspective:

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

And then, as one does while reading a series of quotes from Gandhi, you read everything, and then you come across someone’s quote about Gandhi, and then you read this from Marian Wright Edelman, and hope that you’re up to the challenge:

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.


  1. There are so many non-Western examples that I don’t even know where to begin. This is the problem. 
  2. Everyone who commits violence believes that they, alone, are applying it morally, because their cause is righteous. See The Moral Source of Violence

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