Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Hoffer, Eric

Best Quotes about Humankind

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

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

Proverb, Turkish

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man--yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Antonius, Marcus

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

Shaw, George Bernard

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

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.

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

Robert, Fulghum

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

Twain, Mark

10.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

11.

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

12.

Let us ask ourselves; What kind of people do we think we are?

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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.

14.

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

Foucault, Michel

15.

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.

16.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

17.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

18.

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

19.

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

Mead, Margaret

20.

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

Smith, Adam

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

Crowley, Aleister

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

Johnson

27.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

28.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

29.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

30.

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

Canetti, Elias

31.

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

Dante Alighieri

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.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Churchill, Winston

38.

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

Kant, Immanuel

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Terence

46.

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

Calvino, Italo

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Marshall, Thurgood