Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Sumner, Charles

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

Canetti, Elias

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

Barry, Dave

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

10.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

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.

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.

16.

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

Calvino, Italo

17.

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

18.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

19.

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

20.

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

Mead, Margaret

21.

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

22.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

23.

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

Butler, Samuel

24.

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

Williams, Tennessee

25.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

26.

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

Bible

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

30.

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

Churchill, Winston

31.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

32.

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

33.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

34.

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

Socrates

35.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

Doren, Carl Van

36.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

37.

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

38.

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

Steinbeck, John

39.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

40.

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

41.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

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.

47.

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

Terence

48.

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

Smith, Adam

49.

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

50.

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