Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Da Vinci, Leonardo

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Marshall, Thurgood

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Twain, Mark

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

Barry, Dave

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

Foucault, Michel

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

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.

10.

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

Socrates

11.

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

12.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

16.

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

17.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

18.

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

19.

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

Dante Alighieri

20.

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

Williams, Tennessee

21.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

22.

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

Gide, Andre

23.

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

24.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

25.

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

26.

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

Hoffer, Eric

27.

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

28.

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.

Baudrillard, Jean

29.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Mead, Margaret

34.

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

35.

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

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Murdoch, Iris

39.

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

Caddy, Eileen

40.

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

Bible

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.

Calvino, Italo

45.

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

Twain, Mark

46.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

47.

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