Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

- Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

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

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

Holmes, John Andrew

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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.

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

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

Barry, Dave

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

Sumner, Charles

10.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

13.

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.

14.

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

Terence

15.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

16.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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

Socrates

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Reagan, Ronald

22.

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

Williams, Tennessee

23.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

24.

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

Murdoch, Iris

25.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

26.

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.

Thurber, James

27.

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

28.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

29.

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.

30.

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

Butler, Samuel

31.

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

Dante Alighieri

32.

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

33.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

Quinet, Edgar

34.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

35.

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

36.

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

Mead, Margaret

37.

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

France, Anatole

38.

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

Lessing, Doris

39.

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

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Gide, Andre

48.

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilization concerns man's behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Mayhew, Dr Edward

49.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

50.

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

Fuller, Buckminster