Motivational Quotes

Humankind

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

- Schlegel, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Humankind

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.

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

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.

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Terence

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

11.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Weil, Simone

12.

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.

13.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

14.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

15.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

16.

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

Murdoch, Iris

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

Johnson

19.

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

Caddy, Eileen

20.

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

21.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Calvino, Italo

27.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

28.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Smith, Adam

34.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

35.

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

36.

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

Kant, Immanuel

37.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

38.

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

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.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

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

Smith, Adam

42.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

43.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

44.

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

45.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

46.

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

Rogers, Will

47.

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

48.

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

49.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

Lincoln, Abraham

50.

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

Holmes, John Andrew