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

I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Freud, Sigmund

There are two kinds of people in the world -- those you love, and those you don't understand.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Hugo, Victor

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

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

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

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

Caddy, Eileen

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Twain, Mark

10.

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

Lippmann, Walter

11.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

12.

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

13.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

14.

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

15.

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

16.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

17.

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

Kant, Immanuel

18.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

19.

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

20.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

21.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Twain, Mark

22.

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

23.

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

Sumner, Charles

24.

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

Calvino, Italo

25.

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

Sumner, Charles

26.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple, Sir William

27.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

28.

In our civilization, men are afraid that they will not be men enough and women are afraid that they might be considered only women.

Reik, Theodor

29.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Sarraute, Nathalie

30.

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

Murdoch, Iris

31.

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!

Reichmann, W.J.

32.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

Doren, Carl Van

33.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

34.

A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Einstein, Albert

35.

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

36.

Man is a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

Twain, Mark

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.

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.

Baudrillard, Jean

39.

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

Lawrence, D. H.

40.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

41.

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

42.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

43.

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

44.

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose.

Proverb, Turkish

45.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

Adenauer, Konrad

46.

Let us ask ourselves; What kind of people do we think we are?

Reagan, Ronald

47.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Wilde, Oscar

48.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

49.

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.

Thurber, James

50.

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

Lessing, Doris