Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Calvino, Italo

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

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

Foucault, Michel

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.

Temple, Sir William

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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

11.

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

Churchill, Winston

12.

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

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

13.

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

Canetti, Elias

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

17.

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

18.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

24.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

25.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

Aurelius, Marcus

29.

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

30.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

31.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Steinbeck, John

35.

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

36.

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

37.

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

Lippmann, Walter

38.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

43.

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

Rogers, Will

44.

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

Lessing, Doris

45.

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

Gide, Andre

46.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

50.

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