Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Smith, Adam

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

Rolf, Ida P.

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

Caddy, Eileen

Crowley, Aleister

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

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

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

Sumner, Charles

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

Mead, Margaret

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

10.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

11.

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

12.

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

Kant, Immanuel

13.

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.

14.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

19.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men -- each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature -- are shot down wholesale.

Hesse, Hermann

20.

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

Hoffer, Eric

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

24.

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

25.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Mencken, H. L.

26.

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

27.

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

Wilde, Oscar

28.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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.

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

France, Anatole

31.

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

32.

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

Murdoch, Iris

33.

I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.

Terence

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.

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

36.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

38.

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

Bacon, Francis

39.

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

40.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

41.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

42.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

43.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

44.

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

45.

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

Dante Alighieri

46.

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

Robert, Fulghum

47.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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

Twain, Mark