Motivational Quotes

Humankind

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

Bible

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

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

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

Calvino, Italo

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilization concerns man's behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

Mayhew, Dr Edward

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

Robert, Fulghum

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

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

Smith, Adam

13.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.

Fischer, Ernst

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Steinbeck, John

19.

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

20.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

21.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

26.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

27.

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

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Reagan, Ronald

29.

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

Canetti, Elias

30.

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

Kant, Immanuel

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Caddy, Eileen

36.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

37.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

38.

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

39.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

40.

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

Proverb, Turkish

41.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

42.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

43.

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

44.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

45.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

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.

47.

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.

48.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

49.

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

50.

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