Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Lessing, Doris

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

Bible

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

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

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

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

Marshall, Thurgood

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

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

Bacon, Francis

10.

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

Rogers, Will

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

13.

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

Twain, Mark

14.

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.

15.

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

Canetti, Elias

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

19.

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

20.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

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

22.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.

Casals, Pablo

26.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

27.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

28.

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.

29.

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

Mead, Margaret

30.

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

Socrates

31.

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

Kant, Immanuel

32.

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

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

35.

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

Foucault, Michel

36.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

Churchill, Winston

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

Proverb, Turkish

47.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward