Motivational Quotes

Humankind

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

- Schlegel, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Einstein, Albert

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

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

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

France, Anatole

10.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

11.

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

12.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

13.

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

14.

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

Churchill, Winston

15.

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

Gide, Andre

16.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

Canetti, Elias

17.

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.

18.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

19.

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

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

22.

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

23.

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

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.

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

26.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

27.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

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.

29.

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

Robert, Fulghum

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Murdoch, Iris

33.

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

34.

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

Barry, Dave

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Dante Alighieri

45.

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

Proverb, Turkish

46.

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

Mead, Margaret

47.

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