Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Nietzsche, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

France, Anatole

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

Terence

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

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

Marshall, Thurgood

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

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.

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

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

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

Smith, Adam

13.

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

14.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

15.

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

16.

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

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.

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

Calvino, Italo

19.

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

Smith, Adam

20.

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

21.

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

22.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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.

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

Proverb, Turkish

25.

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

26.

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

Mead, Margaret

27.

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.

28.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

Barry, Dave

31.

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

32.

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

Rogers, Will

33.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

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

41.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

45.

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

Reagan, Ronald

46.

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.

47.

Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.

Fischer, Ernst

48.

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

49.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

50.

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

Hoffer, Eric