Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

- Sterling, John

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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

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

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

Foucault, Michel

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

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

Bacon, Francis

11.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

12.

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

Lessing, Doris

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

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

Kant, Immanuel

17.

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.

18.

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

Doren, Carl Van

19.

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

Canetti, Elias

20.

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

Barry, Dave

21.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

22.

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

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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.

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.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

28.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward

29.

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

Sumner, Charles

30.

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

Socrates

31.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

32.

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

Twain, Mark

33.

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

34.

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

Murdoch, Iris

35.

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

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.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

43.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

44.

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

Smith, Adam

45.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

Adenauer, Konrad

46.

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

France, Anatole

47.

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

Johnson

48.

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

49.

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

Williams, Tennessee

50.

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