Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Machiavelli, Niccolo

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

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

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

Socrates

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

10.

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

11.

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

Reagan, Ronald

12.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Dante Alighieri

16.

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

17.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Sarraute, Nathalie

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Sumner, Charles

23.

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

Steinbeck, John

24.

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

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.

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.

27.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Gide, Andre

32.

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

Rogers, Will

33.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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.

The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.

Sumner, Charles

36.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

37.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

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

39.

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

Doren, Carl Van

40.

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

41.

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

Lessing, Doris

42.

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

43.

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

Kant, Immanuel

44.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

45.

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.

46.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

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

Barry, Dave

48.

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

49.

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

Robert, Fulghum

50.

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.