Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Terence

Best Quotes about Humankind

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

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

Foucault, Michel

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

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

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Smith, Adam

18.

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

Mead, Margaret

19.

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

Kant, Immanuel

20.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

21.

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

22.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

23.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

26.

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

Canetti, Elias

27.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

28.

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

29.

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

Twain, Mark

30.

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

Williams, Tennessee

31.

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.

32.

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

France, Anatole

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

35.

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

36.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

37.

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

Caddy, Eileen

38.

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.

39.

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

Johnson

40.

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

41.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

42.

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

Dante Alighieri

43.

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

44.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.

Baudrillard, Jean

50.

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