Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Humankind

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.

It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.

Rogers, Will

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

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

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.

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

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

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

France, Anatole

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

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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

Williams, Tennessee

11.

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

Dante Alighieri

12.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

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

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

16.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

17.

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

18.

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

Sumner, Charles

19.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

20.

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.

21.

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

Socrates

22.

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

23.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

24.

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

Terence

25.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

30.

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

Mead, Margaret

31.

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

Caddy, Eileen

32.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

Churchill, Winston

34.

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

Foucault, Michel

35.

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.

36.

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

Canetti, Elias

37.

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Hugo, Victor

38.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Plato

39.

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

Lessing, Doris

40.

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

41.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

42.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

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

Doren, Carl Van

45.

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

Butler, Samuel

46.

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

47.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Rolf, Ida P.