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

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

Robert, Fulghum

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Dante Alighieri

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

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

Fuller, Buckminster

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

Foucault, Michel

10.

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

Mead, Margaret

11.

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

12.

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

Sumner, Charles

13.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Watts, Alan W.

17.

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

18.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

19.

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

20.

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

Kant, Immanuel

21.

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

22.

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.

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 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.

25.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

26.

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

Bible

27.

People can be divided into three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no idea what has happened.

28.

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

29.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

30.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

Adenauer, Konrad

31.

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

32.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

33.

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

34.

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Williams, Tennessee

35.

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

Bacon, Francis

36.

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Socrates

44.

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

Terence

45.

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

Canetti, Elias

46.

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

Smith, Adam

47.

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

48.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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.

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

Lessing, Doris