Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Einstein, Albert

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

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

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

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

Caddy, Eileen

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

10.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

11.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Caulfield, Holden

12.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Dante Alighieri

18.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

19.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

20.

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

Butler, Samuel

21.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

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

23.

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

Bacon, Francis

24.

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

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

25.

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

Terence

26.

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

Gide, Andre

27.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

28.

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

29.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

30.

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

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

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

Smith, Adam

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.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

38.

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

Mead, Margaret

39.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

40.

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.

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.

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

Proverb, Turkish

43.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Steinbeck, John

47.

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

48.

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

Barry, Dave

49.

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

Wilde, Oscar

50.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth