Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Rogers, Will

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

Gide, Andre

10.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

11.

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

12.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

13.

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

Socrates

14.

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

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

15.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

16.

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

17.

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

Dante Alighieri

18.

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

19.

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

Smith, Adam

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

22.

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

23.

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!

Reichmann, W.J.

24.

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

25.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

26.

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

27.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

28.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

29.

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

Bacon, Francis

30.

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.

31.

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

Sumner, Charles

32.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

34.

A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable.

Caddy, Eileen

35.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

36.

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

Williams, Tennessee

37.

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

38.

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

Mead, Margaret

39.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

41.

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.

42.

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

Robert, Fulghum

43.

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

44.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

45.

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

Foucault, Michel

46.

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.

47.

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

Smith, Adam

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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

Lessing, Doris