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

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

Barry, Dave

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Dante Alighieri

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

Mead, Margaret

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

Bacon, Francis

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

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

France, Anatole

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.

An effective human being is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Rolf, Ida P.

10.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

11.

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

Lessing, Doris

12.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

13.

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

Rogers, Will

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

Robert, Fulghum

19.

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

Smith, Adam

20.

In our civilization, men are afraid that they will not be men enough and women are afraid that they might be considered only women.

Reik, Theodor

21.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

22.

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

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

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

Sumner, Charles

30.

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

Sumner, Charles

31.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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.

37.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

Doren, Carl Van

38.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

39.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

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.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

48.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

49.

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

Twain, Mark

50.

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