Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

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

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

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.

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.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

12.

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.

13.

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

Caddy, Eileen

14.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

18.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

19.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

20.

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

21.

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

Robert, Fulghum

22.

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

Bible

23.

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

24.

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

25.

I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Freud, Sigmund

26.

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

Smith, Adam

27.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

28.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

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.

30.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

31.

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

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

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

36.

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

Bacon, Francis

37.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

38.

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

Steinbeck, John

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

41.

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

42.

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

Mead, Margaret

43.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

44.

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

45.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Johnson

49.

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

Twain, Mark

50.

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