Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Canetti, Elias

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Dante Alighieri

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

Rogers, Will

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

Rolf, Ida P.

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

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

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

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

Lincoln, Abraham

10.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

11.

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

Mead, Margaret

12.

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

Barry, Dave

13.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

14.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

15.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

16.

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

Canetti, Elias

17.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

18.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

Socrates

22.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

23.

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

Foucault, Michel

24.

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

Bacon, Francis

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.

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

Murdoch, Iris

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

32.

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

33.

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

Caddy, Eileen

34.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

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.

36.

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.

37.

There are two kinds of men who never amount to much -- those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.

Curtis, Cyrus H. K

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

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.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Johnson

45.

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.

46.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Proverb, Turkish

50.

We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.

Morris, Desmond