Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Calvino, Italo

Best Quotes about Humankind

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.

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

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

Calvino, Italo

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

Kant, Immanuel

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Smith, Adam

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

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

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

10.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

11.

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

12.

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

Churchill, Winston

13.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

Lessing, Doris

19.

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

Hoffer, Eric

20.

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

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

24.

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.

25.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

26.

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

Doren, Carl Van

27.

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

Robert, Fulghum

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.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

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.

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.

32.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

Einstein, Albert

37.

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

38.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

39.

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.

40.

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

Canetti, Elias

41.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

42.

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

Rogers, Will

43.

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

44.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

45.

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

Sumner, Charles

46.

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

47.

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

Proverb, Turkish

48.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

49.

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.

Holmes, John Andrew

50.

If you think that every bad thing that has been done on the face of the earth has been done by man, you're right -- but so has every good thing.