Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Williams, Tennessee

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Churchill, Winston

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.

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

Robert, Fulghum

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

Quinet, Edgar

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

Johnson

10.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

16.

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

17.

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

Terence

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

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

Sumner, Charles

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

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.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

Steinbeck, John

27.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

Smith, Adam

31.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

32.

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

Reagan, Ronald

33.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

34.

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

Foucault, Michel

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.

39.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

40.

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

41.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

42.

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

Dante Alighieri

43.

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

44.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

45.

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

46.

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

Bacon, Francis

47.

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

Kant, Immanuel

48.

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.

49.

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