HUMANISM • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Humanism

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/hjˈumənˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

Humanism n.

Human nature or disposition; humanity. "(She) looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the attitude of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism."

The study of the humanities; polite learning.

A doctrine or ethical point of view that emphasizes the dignity and worth of individual people, rejects claims of supernatural influences on humans, and stresses the need for people to achieve improvement of society and self-fulfillment through reason and to develop human-oriented ethical values without theism.

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Etymology of 'Humanism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Humanism" Quotes from Famous Books

... no doubt that these references point out the work of the Reformation which broke the power of Rome's universal supremacy and her long reign of tyranny over the earth. Humanism, discovery of the art of printing, the revival of learning, and other causes contributed to this result. But the real revolt came in 1517, when Luther in Saxony nailed to the church door in Wittenberg his ninety five theses against the ...

— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... most rapid strides toward a lofty civilization have been made since both the sexes assumed this attitude of mutual helpfulness, does it not, by that same token, reveal the source of greatest efficiency while indicating that feminism is humanism, and thus foretelling the ...

— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber

... constantly invited to lecture—at the English College, the Scots College, the American College, the Beda. At the Holy Child Convent he spoke to a crowded audience on "Thomas More and Humanism." Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., thanking him, remarked on the mental resemblance between More and Chesterton, saying that he could quite well imagine them sitting together making jokes, some of them very good and some of them very bad. "Chesterton ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Jebb, in his essay on "Humanism in Education," points out that even less than a hundred years ago the classics still held a virtual monopoly, so far as literary studies were concerned, in the public schools and universities of England. "The culture which ...

— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... splendid hopes of material improvements in civilisation which applied science has held out to us, two influences from which ancient Greek thought seems to have been strangely free. For the Greeks marred the perfect humanism of the great men whom they worshipped, by imputing to them divinity and its supernatural powers; while their science was eminently speculative and often almost mystic in its character, aiming at culture and not utility, at higher spirituality and more ...

— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

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