Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Calvino, Italo

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

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

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

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.

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

Steinbeck, John

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

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.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

10.

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

11.

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

Sumner, Charles

12.

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

Dante Alighieri

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

16.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

17.

There are two kinds of men who never amount to much -- those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.

Curtis, Cyrus H. K

18.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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.

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.

21.

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

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

22.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

23.

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

Hoffer, Eric

24.

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

25.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

26.

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

Gide, Andre

27.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

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

29.

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

Reagan, Ronald

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

33.

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

34.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

35.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

36.

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

Einstein, Albert

37.

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

38.

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

Rogers, Will

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Robert, Fulghum

43.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

44.

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

45.

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

Bible

46.

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

47.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

48.

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.

49.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Hugo, Victor

50.

The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.

Sumner, Charles