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

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

Lessing, Doris

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

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

Smith, Adam

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

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Twain, Mark

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

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

Rogers, Will

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

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

France, Anatole

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Butler, Samuel

16.

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

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

Canetti, Elias

21.

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

22.

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

Caddy, Eileen

23.

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

Einstein, Albert

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.

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

Dante Alighieri

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

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.

30.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

31.

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

Steinbeck, John

32.

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

33.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

34.

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

Mead, Margaret

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

37.

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

38.

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

Williams, Tennessee

39.

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

Proverb, Turkish

40.

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

41.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Socrates

45.

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

46.

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

47.

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