Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Kant, Immanuel

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Dante Alighieri

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

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

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.

Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.

Fischer, Ernst

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

10.

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

Lessing, Doris

11.

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

Caddy, Eileen

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Gide, Andre

16.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

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

Bacon, Francis

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

21.

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

Churchill, Winston

22.

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

Butler, Samuel

23.

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

Robert, Fulghum

24.

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Donne, John

25.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

26.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

27.

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

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

28.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

34.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

40.

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.

41.

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

Rogers, Will

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

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.

44.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Sumner, Charles

49.

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

50.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich