Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Bacon, Francis

Best Quotes about Humankind

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.

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

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Dante Alighieri

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

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

Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. [Genesis 3:5]

Bible

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

14.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

15.

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

France, Anatole

16.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

17.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

18.

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

19.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

20.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

21.

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

Mead, Margaret

22.

Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Hoffer, Eric

26.

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

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

27.

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

Calvino, Italo

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

30.

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

31.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

32.

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

Terence

33.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

34.

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

35.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

36.

People can be divided into three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no idea what has happened.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

40.

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

41.

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

Socrates

42.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

43.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

44.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

45.

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

46.

Everyone is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.

Cervantes, Miguel De

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Steinbeck, John

50.

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