30 quotes about Universal Brother and Sisterhood

This notion of universal brother and sisterhood is an idea that has a rich history and has inspired  many great thinkers from different walks of life, musicians, poets, philosophers, athletes, politicians, novelists, playwrights, actors, social activists and spiritual leaders. It's a notion that may sometimes wane in popularity, but never really grows old, and thus it can be helpful to look at a sample of eloquent reflections on the subject by some distinguished figures of history, which can be even more relevant, timely, and even necessary, in more turbulent times.

 

1- I know that I need a brother who shares this tender, taunting heritage. True friendship. I desire a sister who is not in denial of our mutual past. Together we may be able to plan a less painful future. Separate, we can only anticipate further ruptures and grotesque loneliness.
Maya Angelou, Even the Stars Look Lonesome, 1997, p. 112 

 

Maya Angelou

2- There is the sky, which is all men's together. 

Euripides, Helen, 905

 

3- Christians are my brothers, Hindus are my brothers, all of them are my brothers. We just think different and believe different.

Muhammad Ali, O, The Oprah Magazine, June 2001

 

4- We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.  

Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", Melvill’s Golden Lectures for 1855, 1856

Kahlil Gibran

5- I love you, my brother, whoever you are - whether you worship in a church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. You and I are children of one faith, for the diverse paths of religion are fingers of the loving hand of the one supreme being, a hand extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, eager to receive all. 

Kahlil Gibran, A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, 1974, p. 102

 

7-Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

Thomas Carlyle,

Goethe's Works.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1866895-thomas-carlyle-a-mystic-bond-of-brotherhood-makes-all-men-one/

Goethe's Works.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1866895-thomas-carlyle-a-mystic-bond-of-brotherhood-makes-all-men-one/

Goethe's Works.

Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1866895-thomas-carlyle-a-mystic-bond-of-brotherhood-makes-all-men-one/

Goethe's Works, 1832, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished, Vol. 2

 

8- The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. 

Thomas Merton, final address, conference on East-West monastic dialogue, 10 December 1968, Religious Education, Vol. 73 (1978), p. 292

 

9-God, what a world, if men in street and mart,

Felt that same kinship of the human heart,
Which makes them, in the face of fire and flood,
Rise to the meaning of True Brotherhood.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Brotherhood, Picked Poems, 1912

 

10- Let us acknowledge our weaknesses as a prelude to increasingly our strength. Let us use the admission of weakness not to excuse our own self-indulgence, but to help us understand and forgive others, for this is the secret of brotherhood, its pattern and its aim – to create a world of men, each of whom can feel secure in the conviction that all other men are his brothers – not his enemies.

Oscar Hammerstein II, “4 Leaders Honored at Hub Dinner”, Boston Post, 9 May, 1952

 

11- Have Love. Not love alone for one, but man as man they brother call; 

and scatter like the circling sun thy charities on all. 

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller,  Hope, Faith, and Love, "The Words of Strength"(about 1786) , The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) ed. Horace Mann, p. 386 

 

12- It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.

Malcolm X,  New York City Speech, February 19, 1965 

 

Louisa May Alcott

13- Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and can be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face. 

St. Francis of Assisi, Admonitions, 25. Of True Love

 

14- The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all.

Charlie Chaplin, The Barber's Speech, The Great Dictator, 1940

 
15- The child has talent, loves music, and needs help. I can't give her money, but I can teach her; so I do, and she is the most promising pupil I have. Help one another, is part of the religion of our sisterhood.    

Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl, 1870, Ch. 13

 

16- The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man. 

Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows : Reflections‎ by Pablo Casals as told to Albert E. Kahn, 1970, p. 299

 

17-

Helen Keller

What he now calls the law of justice

Will prepare for him the law of sacrifice

A law more holy, where the instinct of fraternity

Will devote man freely to humanity!

Alphonsede Lamartine, The Fall of the Angel, Œuvres complètes de Lamartine, Vol. 16, 1861, p. 251

 

18- Ancient prejudice of man against his brother man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.

Helen Keller, Optimism, 1903, pp. 46-47

 

19- In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. 

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791, Part 2.7 Chapter V 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20- I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.

W. E. B. Du Bois,  Selections from His Writings, 2013, p.61 

 

21-To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, Ch.2

 

22- A smile or a tear has not nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man. 

Frederick Douglass, Composite Nation  speech in Boston, Speeches and Articles by Douglass, 1894 

 

Frederick Douglass,

23- Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: 

Blind creeds and kings have had their day. 

Break the dead branches from the path; 

Our hope is in the aftermath — 

Our hope is in heroic men, 

Star-led to build the world again. 

To this Event the ages ran: 

Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man. 

Edwin Markham, Brotherhood,  The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, 1899

 

24- In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Booker T. Washington, An Autobiography, The Story of my Life and Work, 1901, p. 140 

 

25-Masonry only sees, in all those religionaries but people, brothers and sisters to which it opens its temple to free them from the prejudices of their countries, of the mistakes of the religions of their ancestors, by bringing them to love and help one another: because Masons deplore and flee error, but neither hate nor persecute it.

Jean-Marie Ragon, Cours philosophique et interprétatif des initiations anciennes et modernes, 1841, p. 37

 

26- If you wish them to be brothers, have them build a tower. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, 1948, p. 52

 

27- May all these people and all their generations walk together as relatives.

Black Elk, Sacred Pipe, 1953, 37

 

28- Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon, Imagine, 1971 

 

29- Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe, next year at this time we'd like each other a little more.

Judy Garland, "The Judy Garland Show.", Sunday, January 5, 1964.

 

30- Only much later will they discover that they have entered into a new community, great but invisible, which encompasses all peoples and all religions. They will be poorer in all dogmatic, national goods, but richer in brotherhood with the souls of all epochs, nations, and languages. Hermann Hesse, Reflections, 1974