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

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

France, Anatole

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

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

Bible

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.

Froude, James A.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Twain, Mark

10.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

11.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

12.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

13.

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

14.

Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Lewis, C. S.

15.

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

16.

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

Sumner, Charles

17.

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

Dante Alighieri

18.

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

19.

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

Terence

20.

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.

21.

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.

22.

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

Calvino, Italo

23.

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

24.

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

Canetti, Elias

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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.

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

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

30.

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

Murdoch, Iris

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

33.

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

Kant, Immanuel

34.

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

35.

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

Socrates

36.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

37.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

38.

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

39.

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

Butler, Samuel

40.

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

41.

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

Barry, Dave

42.

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

Robert, Fulghum

43.

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

44.

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

45.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

46.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Sumner, Charles

50.

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

Churchill, Winston