Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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

Steinbeck, John

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

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

Bible

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

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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 is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

10.

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

11.

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

France, Anatole

12.

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

Mead, Margaret

13.

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.

14.

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

Wilde, Oscar

15.

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

16.

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

Barry, Dave

17.

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge.

Blake, William

18.

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

19.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

20.

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

Caddy, Eileen

21.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

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.

24.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

25.

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

26.

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Williams, Tennessee

27.

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.

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

30.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

31.

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

32.

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

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Proverb, Turkish

34.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

35.

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

36.

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

Churchill, Winston

37.

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

38.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

39.

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

40.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward

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.

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

Murdoch, Iris

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.

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

45.

As far as many statistical series that are related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

Boulding, Kenneth Ewart

46.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

47.

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

Socrates

48.

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.

49.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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