Motivational Quotes

Humankind

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

- Schlegel, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

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

Terence

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.

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

Canetti, Elias

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

10.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

11.

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

12.

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

Socrates

13.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

18.

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

France, Anatole

19.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

20.

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

Barry, Dave

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.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

23.

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

Robert, Fulghum

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

29.

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

30.

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

Foucault, Michel

31.

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

32.

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

Calvino, Italo

33.

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

Bible

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

Wilde, Oscar

38.

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.

Holmes, John Andrew

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Caddy, Eileen

43.

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

Proverb, Turkish

44.

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

45.

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

Twain, Mark

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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