Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Sarraute, Nathalie

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Bible

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

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

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

Churchill, Winston

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

Smith, Adam

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

Williams, Tennessee

10.

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

Bacon, Francis

11.

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

Steinbeck, John

12.

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

13.

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

Robert, Fulghum

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Calvino, Italo

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

Kant, Immanuel

23.

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

24.

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

Foucault, Michel

25.

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

Hoffer, Eric

26.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

27.

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

Sumner, Charles

28.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

29.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

30.

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Holmes, John Andrew

33.

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.

34.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

35.

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

Sumner, Charles

36.

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

37.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

38.

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.

39.

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

Dante Alighieri

40.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Wilde, Oscar

47.

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

Murdoch, Iris

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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