Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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

Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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.

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.

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

Gide, Andre

10.

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

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

Crowley, Aleister

13.

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

Sumner, Charles

14.

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

Butler, Samuel

15.

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

16.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

17.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

18.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

19.

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

Canetti, Elias

20.

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

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.

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

23.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

24.

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

25.

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

Johnson

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

29.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

30.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

31.

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

32.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

33.

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.

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.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

Shaw, George Bernard

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Rogers, Will

40.

There are two kinds of people in the world -- those you love, and those you don't understand.

41.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

42.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

43.

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

Murdoch, Iris

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Williams, Tennessee

47.

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

48.

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

Terence

49.

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

50.

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

Proverb, Turkish