Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Adenauer, Konrad

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

12.

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

13.

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

Williams, Tennessee

14.

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

15.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

16.

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

Socrates

17.

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.

18.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Canetti, Elias

24.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Bacon, Francis

29.

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

Churchill, Winston

30.

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

Mead, Margaret

31.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.

Kent, Sir Arthur

32.

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.

33.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

34.

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.

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

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

37.

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

Kant, Immanuel

38.

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.

39.

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

Terence

40.

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

Wilde, Oscar

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

43.

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

Doren, Carl Van

44.

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.

45.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

46.

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

Smith, Adam

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

49.

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.

50.

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