Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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.

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

Reagan, Ronald

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

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.

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

Twain, Mark

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

10.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Hoffer, Eric

15.

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

Caddy, Eileen

16.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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.

18.

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

Williams, Tennessee

19.

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

20.

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

Sumner, Charles

21.

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

Robert, Fulghum

22.

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

Sumner, Charles

23.

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

24.

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

Canetti, Elias

25.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

26.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

27.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

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

Socrates

29.

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

30.

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

31.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Watts, Alan W.

32.

As far as many statistical series that are related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

Boulding, Kenneth Ewart

33.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

34.

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

35.

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

Gide, Andre

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Einstein, Albert

40.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

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

Calvino, Italo

42.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

43.

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

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

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

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

Terence

47.

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

48.

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

Steinbeck, John

49.

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

50.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von