Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Foucault, Michel

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Calvino, Italo

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Holmes, John Andrew

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.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

10.

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

11.

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; And when I'm introduced to one I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Raleigh, Sir Walter

12.

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

Socrates

13.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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.

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

Williams, Tennessee

16.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

Doren, Carl Van

17.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Sarraute, Nathalie

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

21.

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

22.

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

Kant, Immanuel

23.

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

Hoffer, Eric

24.

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

Bible

25.

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

26.

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

Churchill, Winston

27.

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

Sumner, Charles

28.

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

Rogers, Will

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

Caddy, Eileen

31.

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

France, Anatole

32.

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

Canetti, Elias

33.

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

34.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

36.

There are two kinds of people in the world -- those you love, and those you don't understand.

37.

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

Sumner, Charles

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Twain, Mark

43.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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