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

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

Bible

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

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

As far as many statistical series that are related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

Boulding, Kenneth Ewart

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

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

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

Canetti, Elias

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

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

13.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

14.

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

15.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

21.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

22.

The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.

Sumner, Charles

23.

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

Smith, Adam

24.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

25.

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

26.

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

Steinbeck, John

27.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

Marshall, Thurgood

28.

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

29.

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

30.

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire,why wasn't it done the other way?

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

31.

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

Terence

32.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.

Gandhi, Mahatma

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

36.

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

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

37.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

38.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

39.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

40.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

41.

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

Gide, Andre

42.

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.

43.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

Leonard, George

44.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

45.

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

46.

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

Murdoch, Iris

47.

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

Dante Alighieri

48.

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

49.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

50.

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.