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... 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

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.

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.

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

Dante Alighieri

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

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

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

Marshall, Thurgood

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilization concerns man's behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Mayhew, Dr Edward

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.

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

Foucault, Michel

11.

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

12.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

13.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

14.

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

15.

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

16.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.

Mead, Margaret

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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.

19.

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

Proverb, Turkish

20.

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

Smith, Adam

21.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

22.

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.

23.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Bacon, Francis

24.

Heinlein, Robert

25.

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

Robert, Fulghum

26.

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

Caddy, Eileen

27.

[Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

28.

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

Johnson

29.

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.

30.

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

Butler, Samuel

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

37.

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

Socrates

38.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

39.

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.

40.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

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

Rogers, Will

42.

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

Steinbeck, John

43.

Everyone is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.

Cervantes, Miguel De

44.

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

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.

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

Smith, Adam

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

50.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman