Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

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

Dante Alighieri

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

Fuller, Buckminster

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

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

Barry, Dave

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

France, Anatole

10.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

11.

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

12.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

13.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

14.

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

15.

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

Sumner, Charles

16.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Gide, Andre

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

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

22.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

Leonard, George

23.

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

Socrates

24.

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

Williams, Tennessee

25.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

26.

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

Sumner, Charles

27.

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

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Foucault, Michel

31.

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

32.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

33.

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

34.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

35.

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

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

Steinbeck, John

37.

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

Doren, Carl Van

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

42.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

43.

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

Proverb, Turkish

44.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

45.

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

Butler, Samuel

46.

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

47.

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

Churchill, Winston

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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