Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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

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

Dante Alighieri

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

10.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

11.

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

12.

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

Steinbeck, John

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

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

Kant, Immanuel

15.

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

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Bacon, Francis

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Doren, Carl Van

20.

Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this.

Smith, Adam

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

France, Anatole

28.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

29.

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

30.

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

Rogers, Will

31.

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

Canetti, Elias

32.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

33.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

34.

Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Hoffer, Eric

35.

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

Sumner, Charles

36.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

37.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

38.

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

39.

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

Sumner, Charles

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Fuller, Buckminster

43.

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.

44.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

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