Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

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.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

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

Terence

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

Lessing, Doris

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

Barry, Dave

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

10.

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

Mead, Margaret

11.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Einstein, Albert

12.

It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.

Rogers, Will

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Kant, Immanuel

18.

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

Calvino, Italo

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

21.

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

Caddy, Eileen

22.

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

Canetti, Elias

23.

If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.

Pope, Alexander

24.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

25.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

26.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

27.

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

28.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.

Kent, Sir Arthur

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Smith, Adam

32.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

33.

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

34.

Watts, Alan W.

35.

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

36.

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

France, Anatole

37.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

38.

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.

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.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

49.

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

Hoffer, Eric

50.

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

Dante Alighieri