Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Humankind

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

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

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

Bacon, Francis

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

Terence

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

Steinbeck, John

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.

Holmes, John Andrew

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

Kant, Immanuel

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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

11.

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

Socrates

12.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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.

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

Smith, Adam

15.

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.

16.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

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.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Doren, Carl Van

21.

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

Foucault, Michel

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

26.

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

27.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

28.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

29.

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

30.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

31.

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

Proverb, Turkish

32.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

33.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Twain, Mark

34.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

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

36.

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

Lawrence, D. H.

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

[Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

47.

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

Butler, Samuel

48.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

49.

The Goddamn human race deserves itself, and as far as I'm concerned it can have it.