Motivational Quotes

Humankind

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

- Schlegel, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Adenauer, Konrad

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

Williams, Tennessee

[Three classes of people]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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.

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.

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Calvino, Italo

10.

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.

11.

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

Caddy, Eileen

12.

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

13.

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

14.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Heinlein, Robert

15.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

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.

17.

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

Canetti, Elias

18.

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

Doren, Carl Van

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

23.

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.

24.

Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this.

Smith, Adam

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

30.

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

Twain, Mark

31.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

32.

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

33.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

34.

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.

35.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

36.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Sarraute, Nathalie

38.

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.

39.

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

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.

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.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

47.

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

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

48.

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

49.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

50.

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