Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

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

Einstein, Albert

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Donne, John

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

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

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

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

Terence

10.

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

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

14.

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

Foucault, Michel

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

France, Anatole

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Lessing, Doris

21.

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

Williams, Tennessee

22.

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

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

25.

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

Canetti, Elias

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

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

28.

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

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.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

31.

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

Reagan, Ronald

32.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

33.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

34.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

35.

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

Socrates

36.

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

37.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Sumner, Charles

42.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

43.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

44.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

An effective human being is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Rolf, Ida P.

49.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

50.

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

Adenauer, Konrad