Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Rolf, Ida P.

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

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

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

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

Rolf, Ida P.

10.

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

11.

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

Mead, Margaret

12.

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

Sumner, Charles

13.

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

Terence

14.

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

Churchill, Winston

15.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.

Leonard, George

16.

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

17.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

21.

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

France, Anatole

22.

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

Gide, Andre

23.

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

Lessing, Doris

24.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

25.

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

26.

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

Socrates

27.

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

Bacon, Francis

28.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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.

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

Bible

31.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

32.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

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

34.

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

Johnson

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

Wilde, Oscar

37.

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

Einstein, Albert

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

42.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

43.

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

44.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Man was nature's mistake --she neglected to finish him -- and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.

Hoffer, Eric

48.

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

49.

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