Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Bacon, Francis

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

Einstein, Albert

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

Murdoch, Iris

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

10.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Steinbeck, John

12.

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

Smith, Adam

13.

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

14.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

15.

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

16.

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

Canetti, Elias

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Gide, Andre

24.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

25.

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

26.

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

Smith, Adam

27.

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

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

Kant, Immanuel

31.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

32.

Man must realize his own unimportance before he can appreciate his importance.

Baumgardy, R. M.

33.

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

34.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

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

Doren, Carl Van

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

Foucault, Michel

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.

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

41.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

42.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

49.

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

Twain, Mark

50.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich