Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Caddy, Eileen

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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 a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple, Sir William

10.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

11.

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

France, Anatole

12.

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

Terence

13.

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

Murdoch, Iris

14.

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

Churchill, Winston

15.

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

16.

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

Smith, Adam

17.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

18.

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

19.

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

Bible

20.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.

Kent, Sir Arthur

21.

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

22.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

23.

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

Foucault, Michel

24.

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

25.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

Johnson

27.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

28.

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

Robert, Fulghum

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

Caddy, Eileen

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

37.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

38.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Bacon, Francis

43.

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

Williams, Tennessee

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

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.

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

Sumner, Charles

50.

But remember please, the Law by which we live, we are not built to comprehend a lie, we can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die.

Kipling, Rudyard