Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Wilde, Oscar

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

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

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

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Steinbeck, John

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.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

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

Twain, Mark

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

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

12.

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.

13.

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

Sumner, Charles

14.

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.

15.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

16.

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

Caddy, Eileen

17.

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

Adenauer, Konrad

18.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Murdoch, Iris

24.

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

Williams, Tennessee

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.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!

Reichmann, W.J.

28.

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

Johnson

29.

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

Einstein, Albert

30.

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

31.

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

32.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

Smith, Adam

34.

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

Lessing, Doris

35.

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

Dante Alighieri

36.

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

Terence

37.

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.

38.

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

Sumner, Charles

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Mead, Margaret

42.

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

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

45.

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

France, Anatole

46.

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

Butler, Samuel

47.

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

48.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

49.

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.

50.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth