Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Marshall, Thurgood

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

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

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

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

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

Fuller, Buckminster

10.

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

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

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.

13.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

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

Foucault, Michel

15.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

16.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

17.

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

18.

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

Einstein, Albert

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

Rogers, Will

23.

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

Gide, Andre

24.

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

25.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

26.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

27.

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

Bible

28.

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

Sumner, Charles

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

Churchill, Winston

36.

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

Mead, Margaret

37.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

Lincoln, Abraham

43.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

44.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

45.

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

46.

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

Kant, Immanuel

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

50.

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

Barry, Dave