Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Doren, Carl Van

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Socrates

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

10.

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

11.

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

Barry, Dave

12.

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

13.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

14.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

15.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

16.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Caulfield, Holden

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

20.

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

Reagan, Ronald

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

Everyone is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.

Cervantes, Miguel De

25.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

26.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

27.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Foucault, Michel

32.

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

Rogers, Will

33.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

34.

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

Doren, Carl Van

35.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

36.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

37.

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

Robert, Fulghum

38.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

Kant, Immanuel

40.

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

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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.

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

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

Hoffer, Eric

45.

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

46.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

47.

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

48.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

49.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.