Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Johnson

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Twain, Mark

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

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 is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

Twain, Mark

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

Gide, Andre

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

Murdoch, Iris

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Terence

13.

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

14.

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

Bible

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Smith, Adam

19.

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

Einstein, Albert

20.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

Leonard, George

21.

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

22.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

23.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

27.

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

28.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

29.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

30.

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

31.

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

Smith, Adam

32.

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

Foucault, Michel

33.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

Lincoln, Abraham

34.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

France, Anatole

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Proverb, Turkish

38.

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

Williams, Tennessee

39.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

40.

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

41.

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

Reagan, Ronald

42.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

Steinbeck, John

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Robert, Fulghum

50.

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