Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Dante Alighieri

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.

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

Kant, Immanuel

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

10.

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

Gide, Andre

11.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Doren, Carl Van

15.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

16.

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

Steinbeck, John

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.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Caulfield, Holden

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

21.

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

22.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

Miller, Henry

23.

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.

24.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

25.

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

26.

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

Mead, Margaret

27.

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

28.

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

Calvino, Italo

29.

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

30.

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

Murdoch, Iris

31.

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

Lessing, Doris

32.

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

33.

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

Twain, Mark

34.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

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

France, Anatole

36.

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

37.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

38.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Socrates

45.

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

46.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

47.

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

48.

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

Twain, Mark

49.

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.

50.

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

Shaw, George Bernard