Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Humankind

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

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

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.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Socrates

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Doren, Carl Van

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.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

13.

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

14.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

15.

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

Mead, Margaret

16.

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

Lessing, Doris

17.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

18.

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

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

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

24.

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

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

Johnson

26.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

27.

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

28.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

Proverb, Turkish

34.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

35.

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.

36.

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

Robert, Fulghum

37.

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

Kant, Immanuel

38.

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

39.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

44.

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

45.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

46.

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

Foucault, Michel

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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