Skip to content
quotesby

You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.

Percy Bysshe Shelley#204

LoveEqualityRightsHuman rights

About this quote

What does it mean?
Universal love for all people would eliminate property and power distinctions naturally.
In plain terms
If we love everyone equally, power and property differences will end.
What can you take from it?
Universal love removes social divisions.

Where it applies

  • activism
  • community building
  • reform

Putting it to work

  • love universally
  • advocate for equality

Questions to consider

  • Can love solve injustice?
  • How do you love broadly?

Another view

Power structures often resist love-based change.

More from Percy Bysshe Shelley

  1. In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance a…

    Permalink to quote #203
  2. Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. The pageantry of empire, and the fame of irresistible mi…

    Permalink to quote #205
  3. Too mean-spirited and too feeble in resolve to attempt the conquest of their own evil passions, and of the difficulties of the material world, men sought domin…

    Permalink to quote #202

Related quotes

  1. It doesn't matter who you love, it's that you love. Who cares if men marry men or women marry women? In San Francisco you don't care, and I applaud that. And I…

    Megan MullallyMegan Mullally quote #1
  2. What is more important is that these are not separate or distinct threats. When we scratch the surface, we find them closely connected and interrelated. We are…

    Mohamed ElBaradeiMohamed ElBaradei quote #14
  3. While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem …

    Lucy StoneLucy Stone quote #15