Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Humankind

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

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

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

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

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

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

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.

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

12.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Kant, Immanuel

13.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

14.

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

Terence

15.

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

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

Bacon, Francis

17.

We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.

Morris, Desmond

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.

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

Dante Alighieri

20.

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

21.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

Adenauer, Konrad

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

24.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

25.

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.

26.

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

Doren, Carl Van

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Steinbeck, John

30.

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

Canetti, Elias

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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

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.

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

Lessing, Doris

35.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

36.

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

Hoffer, Eric

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

France, Anatole

41.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

42.

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

43.

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

Barry, Dave

44.

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

Caddy, Eileen

45.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

46.

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

Mead, Margaret

47.

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

Socrates

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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