Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Churchill, Winston

Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. [Genesis 3:5]

Bible

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

Gide, Andre

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

Lessing, Doris

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

Thurber, James

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

10.

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

Proverb, Turkish

11.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

12.

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

13.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

15.

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

Sumner, Charles

16.

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

Smith, Adam

17.

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.

18.

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

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

19.

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

Hoffer, Eric

20.

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

21.

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.

Hamilton, Edith

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

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

Mead, Margaret

27.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

28.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

29.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

30.

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

Terence

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

35.

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

Smith, Adam

36.

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.

37.

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

Steinbeck, John

38.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

39.

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

40.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

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

46.

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

Calvino, Italo

47.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

48.

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.

49.

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