Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

- Aurelius, Marcus

Best Quotes about Humankind

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Foucault, Michel

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

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

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

10.

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

11.

Consider your breed; you were not made to live like beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Dante Alighieri

12.

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

Butler, Samuel

13.

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

France, Anatole

14.

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire,why wasn't it done the other way?

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

15.

Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

Dahlberg, Edward

16.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

17.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

Smith, Adam

18.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

19.

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.

Hamilton, Edith

20.

Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.

Daumal, Rene

21.

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

Kant, Immanuel

22.

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.

23.

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

Murdoch, Iris

24.

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

Socrates

25.

Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Lewis, C. S.

26.

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

Caddy, Eileen

27.

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man--yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Antonius, Marcus

28.

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

29.

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, What's it for?

Robert, Fulghum

30.

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

31.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

Marshall, Thurgood

32.

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

Sumner, Charles

33.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

34.

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

Lessing, Doris

35.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Einstein, Albert

36.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

Lincoln, Abraham

37.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

38.

We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.

Casals, Pablo

39.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

Crowley, Aleister

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

44.

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

45.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

Leonard, George

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The Goddamn human race deserves itself, and as far as I'm concerned it can have it.

Janeway, Elizabeth

49.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

50.

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Williams, Tennessee