Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

- Butler, Samuel

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Butler, Samuel

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.

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

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.

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

Sumner, Charles

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

Barry, Dave

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

10.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

11.

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

Terence

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

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

14.

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

15.

A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable.

Caddy, Eileen

16.

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

Churchill, Winston

17.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

18.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

19.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

20.

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

21.

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

Bible

22.

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

Reagan, Ronald

23.

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.

24.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Doren, Carl Van

28.

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

29.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

30.

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.

31.

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

Gide, Andre

32.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

33.

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

34.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

38.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

39.

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

40.

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

Wilde, Oscar

41.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

42.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

43.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

44.

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

45.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

46.

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

Twain, Mark

47.

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

Twain, Mark

48.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

49.

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

50.

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