Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

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

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

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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.

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

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.

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

Barry, Dave

10.

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

France, Anatole

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Mead, Margaret

14.

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

Reagan, Ronald

15.

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.

16.

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

Dante Alighieri

17.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Bible

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 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

23.

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

24.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

Ruskin, John

28.

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

Sumner, Charles

29.

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

30.

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

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

31.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

32.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

33.

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

Canetti, Elias

34.

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

Kant, Immanuel

35.

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

Terence

36.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

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

Smith, Adam

38.

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

39.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

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

41.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

42.

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

Doren, Carl Van

43.

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

44.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

45.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

46.

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

47.

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