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

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

Gide, Andre

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

Reagan, Ronald

People can be divided into three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no idea what has happened.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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

Twain, Mark

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

Bible

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

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

Terence

10.

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

11.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Churchill, Winston

12.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

13.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

14.

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.

15.

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

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

Smith, Adam

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

23.

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.

24.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

31.

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

Robert, Fulghum

32.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

33.

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

Socrates

34.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

35.

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

Sumner, Charles

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Caddy, Eileen

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

Kant, Immanuel

44.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

45.

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

46.

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

Einstein, Albert

47.

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

Johnson

48.

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

49.

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

Bacon, Francis

50.

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