Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Holmes, John Andrew

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

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.

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

Proverb, Turkish

10.

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

11.

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

Canetti, Elias

12.

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

13.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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

Calvino, Italo

15.

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

Terence

16.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

17.

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

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Steinbeck, John

20.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Murdoch, Iris

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

28.

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

Sumner, Charles

29.

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

30.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

31.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Gide, Andre

32.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

33.

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.

34.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Hugo, Victor

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

39.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

40.

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

Mead, Margaret

41.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

42.

As far as many statistical series that are related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

Boulding, Kenneth Ewart

43.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

44.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

46.

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

Bacon, Francis

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Butler, Samuel

50.

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.