Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Fuller, Buckminster

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

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

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

Sumner, Charles

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

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

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

France, Anatole

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.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

10.

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

11.

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

Smith, Adam

12.

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

Socrates

13.

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

Doren, Carl Van

14.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

15.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

16.

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

17.

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

18.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

19.

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.

20.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

21.

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

Proverb, Turkish

22.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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.

25.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

26.

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

Rogers, Will

27.

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

28.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

29.

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

Gide, Andre

30.

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.

31.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

32.

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

33.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

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

35.

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

Calvino, Italo

36.

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

37.

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Robert, Fulghum

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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

Kant, Immanuel

43.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

44.

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

Terence

45.

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

46.

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

Twain, Mark

47.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

Mencken, H. L.

48.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

Johnson

49.

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