Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Baumgardy, R. M.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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

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

Sumner, Charles

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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

Twain, Mark

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

Canetti, Elias

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

10.

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

Rogers, Will

11.

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.

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

13.

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

Doren, Carl Van

14.

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

15.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Watts, Alan W.

16.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

17.

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

Proverb, Turkish

18.

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

19.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

Johnson

20.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

21.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

25.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Caulfield, Holden

26.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

27.

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.

28.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

29.

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

Bacon, Francis

30.

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

Barry, Dave

31.

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

32.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

Bible

35.

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

Foucault, Michel

36.

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

37.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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.

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

40.

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

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

41.

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

42.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Kant, Immanuel

47.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

48.

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

49.

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

Twain, Mark