Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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.

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.

Fuller, Buckminster

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

Rogers, Will

10.

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

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.

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

13.

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

France, Anatole

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

18.

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

19.

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

Churchill, Winston

20.

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

Kant, Immanuel

21.

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

22.

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

Smith, Adam

23.

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

24.

Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

Aurelius, Marcus

25.

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

Reagan, Ronald

26.

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

Lessing, Doris

27.

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

Calvino, Italo

28.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

29.

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

Socrates

30.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

31.

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

32.

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

Twain, Mark

33.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

34.

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

35.

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

Mead, Margaret

36.

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

Einstein, Albert

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Hoffer, Eric

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

Caddy, Eileen

46.

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

Doren, Carl Van

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De