Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Shaw, George Bernard

Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

Einstein, Albert

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

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.

Einstein, Albert

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.

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

Smith, Adam

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

10.

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

Kant, Immanuel

11.

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

12.

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

Proverb, Turkish

13.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

14.

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.

15.

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

Hoffer, Eric

16.

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.

17.

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

Foucault, Michel

18.

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

France, Anatole

19.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

20.

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

21.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

22.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

23.

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

24.

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

Caddy, Eileen

25.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

26.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Bible

30.

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.

Baudrillard, Jean

31.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

32.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Churchill, Winston

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Sumner, Charles

38.

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.

39.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

40.

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

41.

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

Smith, Adam

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.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Rogers, Will

47.

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.

Thurber, James

48.

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

Socrates

49.

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

50.

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

Dante Alighieri