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

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

Dante Alighieri

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Bacon, Francis

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

Smith, Adam

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

Canetti, Elias

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

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

Butler, Samuel

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

10.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

15.

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

Caddy, Eileen

16.

There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece.

Barry, Dave

17.

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.

18.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

19.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Bible

27.

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

28.

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

Smith, Adam

29.

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

Sumner, Charles

30.

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

31.

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

Churchill, Winston

32.

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

33.

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

34.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Socrates

35.

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.

36.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Twain, Mark

37.

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

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

France, Anatole

44.

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

45.

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

Murdoch, Iris

46.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

47.

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

Steinbeck, John

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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