Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Machiavelli, Niccolo

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Bible

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

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Calvino, Italo

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

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

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.

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

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

10.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

11.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

12.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

13.

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

Churchill, Winston

14.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

19.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

20.

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

Canetti, Elias

21.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

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

Bacon, Francis

24.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple, Sir William

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Steinbeck, John

28.

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; And when I'm introduced to one I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Raleigh, Sir Walter

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

34.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

35.

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

Robert, Fulghum

36.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.

Pope, Alexander

42.

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

Smith, Adam

43.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Consider your breed; you were not made to live like beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Dante Alighieri

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

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

49.

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilization concerns man's behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Mayhew, Dr Edward

50.

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

Williams, Tennessee