Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

Fuller, Buckminster

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

Mead, Margaret

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

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

Kant, Immanuel

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

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.

10.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

11.

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

Robert, Fulghum

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.

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

Twain, Mark

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

18.

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

19.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

Crowley, Aleister

20.

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

Canetti, Elias

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.

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.

23.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

Quinet, Edgar

24.

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

25.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

26.

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

Wilde, Oscar

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

31.

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

Hoffer, Eric

32.

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

Calvino, Italo

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

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

Smith, Adam

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Dante Alighieri

43.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

44.

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

45.

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

Caddy, Eileen

46.

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

47.

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

France, Anatole

48.

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

49.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

Adenauer, Konrad

50.

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

Barry, Dave