Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Fuller, Buckminster

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

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

Smith, Adam

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

Einstein, Albert

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

France, Anatole

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

Twain, Mark

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

Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

Dahlberg, Edward

10.

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

11.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

12.

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!

Reichmann, W.J.

13.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

14.

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

Churchill, Winston

15.

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

Calvino, Italo

16.

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

Robert, Fulghum

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Barry, Dave

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.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Johnson

25.

Consider your breed; you were not made to live like beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Dante Alighieri

26.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Mead, Margaret

30.

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

Twain, Mark

31.

An effective human being is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Rolf, Ida P.

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Foucault, Michel

35.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

36.

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.

37.

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.

38.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

40.

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

Gide, Andre

41.

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

42.

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

Caddy, Eileen

43.

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

44.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

45.

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

Rogers, Will

46.

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

Doren, Carl Van

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

Bacon, Francis

50.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry