Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about 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

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

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

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.

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

France, Anatole

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

Shaw, George Bernard

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

Freud, Sigmund

10.

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

Doren, Carl Van

11.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Hoffer, Eric

15.

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

Steinbeck, John

16.

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

17.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

18.

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

Canetti, Elias

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Churchill, Winston

23.

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

Sumner, Charles

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Sumner, Charles

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

30.

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

Calvino, Italo

31.

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

Kant, Immanuel

32.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple, Sir William

38.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

39.

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

Dante Alighieri

40.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

41.

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

42.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

46.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

47.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Caddy, Eileen