Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Rogers, Will

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

Einstein, Albert

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

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

Socrates

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.

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

Calvino, Italo

12.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

13.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

14.

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

15.

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth.

Hamilton, Edith

16.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.

Gandhi, Mahatma

17.

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.

18.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

19.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

20.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

Johnson

21.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

22.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

23.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

24.

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

25.

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

Mead, Margaret

26.

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.

27.

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

Barry, Dave

28.

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

Kant, Immanuel

29.

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

Sumner, Charles

30.

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

31.

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

Hoffer, Eric

32.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

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

34.

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire,why wasn't it done the other way?

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

35.

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

Butler, Samuel

36.

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.

37.

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

Murdoch, Iris

38.

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

39.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

40.

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

41.

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

Foucault, Michel

42.

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

Smith, Adam

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

45.

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

Terence

46.

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

Gide, Andre

47.

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.

48.

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