Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Sumner, Charles

If you think that every bad thing that has been done on the face of the earth has been done by man, you're right -- but so has every good thing.

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

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

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

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

France, Anatole

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

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

Socrates

10.

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

Rogers, Will

11.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

14.

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

Murdoch, Iris

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

20.

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

21.

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

Barry, Dave

22.

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

23.

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

Bacon, Francis

24.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

25.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

26.

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

Doren, Carl Van

27.

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

28.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

Smith, Adam

30.

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

31.

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.

Froude, James A.

32.

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

33.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

34.

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose.

Proverb, Turkish

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Foucault, Michel

39.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

40.

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

Kant, Immanuel

41.

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

Gide, Andre

42.

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

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

48.

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

49.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

50.

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