Motivational Quotes

Humankind

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

- Apollinaire, Guillaume

Best Quotes about Humankind

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.

Froude, James A.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Gide, Andre

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

Ruskin, John

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.

Fuller, Buckminster

[Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Butler, Samuel

I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.

Terence

A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable.

Caddy, Eileen

10.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

11.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

12.

Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

Einstein, Albert

13.

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.

14.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

France, Anatole

15.

It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.

Rogers, Will

16.

If you think that every bad thing that has been done on the face of the earth has been done by man, you're right -- but so has every good thing.

17.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

18.

There are two kinds of men who never amount to much -- those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.

Curtis, Cyrus H. K

19.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Lessing, Doris

21.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

22.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.

Mead, Margaret

23.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Steinbeck, John

24.

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; And when I'm introduced to one I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Raleigh, Sir Walter

25.

Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.

Fischer, Ernst

26.

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.

Calvino, Italo

27.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.

Gandhi, Mahatma

28.

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge.

Blake, William

29.

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilization concerns man's behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Mayhew, Dr Edward

30.

Man must realize his own unimportance before he can appreciate his importance.

Baumgardy, R. M.

31.

The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.

Sumner, Charles

32.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

34.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Kant, Immanuel

35.

An effective human being is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Rolf, Ida P.

36.

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

Sumner, Charles

37.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

38.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.

Kent, Sir Arthur

40.

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

Freud, Sigmund

41.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.

Pope, Alexander

44.

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Donne, John

45.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Socrates

46.

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

Foucault, Michel

47.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Weil, Simone

48.

Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Hoffer, Eric

49.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

50.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Bacon, Francis