Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Bacon, Francis

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Sumner, Charles

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

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

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

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

Lessing, Doris

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece.

Barry, Dave

10.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

11.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

12.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this.

Smith, Adam

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Smith, Adam

18.

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

19.

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

20.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

21.

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

Doren, Carl Van

22.

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

Socrates

23.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

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

28.

But remember please, the Law by which we live, we are not built to comprehend a lie, we can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die.

Kipling, Rudyard

29.

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

Dante Alighieri

30.

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

31.

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

France, Anatole

32.

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

Twain, Mark

33.

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.

34.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Churchill, Winston

35.

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

Williams, Tennessee

36.

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

Caddy, Eileen

37.

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

Kant, Immanuel

38.

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

39.

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

Wilde, Oscar

40.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

41.

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

Einstein, Albert

42.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Robert, Fulghum

50.

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