Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

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

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

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

Sumner, Charles

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Twain, Mark

10.

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

11.

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

Canetti, Elias

12.

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.

13.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

14.

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Lessing, Doris

15.

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

16.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

17.

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

18.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

19.

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

Kant, Immanuel

20.

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

Caddy, Eileen

21.

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

Steinbeck, John

22.

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

23.

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

Churchill, Winston

24.

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

25.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

26.

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

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Smith, Adam

32.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

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

34.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

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

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

37.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

39.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Bacon, Francis

44.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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