Motivational Quotes

Humankind

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.

- Gandhi, Mahatma

Best Quotes about Humankind

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

Caddy, Eileen

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

Bible

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Caulfield, Holden

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Lessing, Doris

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

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

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

10.

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

Johnson

11.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Hoffer, Eric

19.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Sumner, Charles

24.

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

Socrates

25.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

26.

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

Dante Alighieri

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

34.

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

35.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Churchill, Winston

40.

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

Murdoch, Iris

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

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

43.

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

Gide, Andre

44.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

45.

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

Twain, Mark

46.

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

47.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

48.

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

Proverb, Turkish

49.

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

50.

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