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

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

Barry, Dave

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

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

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Bible

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

Williams, Tennessee

19.

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

21.

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

Bacon, Francis

22.

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

23.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

24.

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

Proverb, Turkish

25.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

26.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

27.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

33.

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

34.

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

Robert, Fulghum

35.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

36.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

37.

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

38.

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

Sumner, Charles

39.

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

Smith, Adam

40.

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

41.

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

42.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Steinbeck, John

43.

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.

44.

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

Wilde, Oscar

45.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

46.

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

Twain, Mark

47.

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

48.

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

Einstein, Albert

49.

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

Lessing, Doris

50.

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