Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Hoffer, Eric

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Adenauer, Konrad

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

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

Marshall, Thurgood

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

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

Robert, Fulghum

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

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Smith, Adam

12.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

Quinet, Edgar

13.

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

Mead, Margaret

14.

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

Einstein, Albert

15.

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

Foucault, Michel

16.

Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. [Genesis 3:5]

Bible

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.

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 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

20.

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

Terence

21.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

22.

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

23.

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

Proverb, Turkish

24.

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

Calvino, Italo

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

29.

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

30.

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

Lessing, Doris

31.

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

32.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

34.

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

35.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Weil, Simone

36.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

37.

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

38.

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

Steinbeck, John

39.

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.

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

42.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

43.

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

44.

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

Smith, Adam

45.

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

Barry, Dave

46.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

50.

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