Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Holmes, John Andrew

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Hoffer, Eric

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

Canetti, Elias

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

Bible

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

Proverb, Turkish

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece.

Barry, Dave

14.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

15.

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

Lippmann, Walter

16.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

17.

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

Wilde, Oscar

18.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

24.

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

Calvino, Italo

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Kant, Immanuel

28.

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.

29.

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

30.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Einstein, Albert

31.

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.

Hamilton, Edith

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Terence

35.

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.

36.

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.

37.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

38.

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

Rogers, Will

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.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

41.

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

Sumner, Charles

42.

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

Johnson

43.

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

44.

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.

Thurber, James

45.

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

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

46.

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

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.

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

Lessing, Doris

49.

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

Caddy, Eileen

50.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo