Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Murdoch, Iris

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

Einstein, Albert

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

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

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.

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

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.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

Steinbeck, John

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

10.

There are two kinds of men who never amount to much -- those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.

Curtis, Cyrus H. K

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Dante Alighieri

17.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

18.

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

19.

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

Foucault, Michel

20.

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

Socrates

21.

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

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

Bible

23.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

24.

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

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

29.

Let us ask ourselves; What kind of people do we think we are?

Reagan, Ronald

30.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

31.

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

Barry, Dave

32.

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

Twain, Mark

33.

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

Smith, Adam

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.

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

Robert, Fulghum

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Marshall, Thurgood

39.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

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

42.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

43.

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

Hoffer, Eric

44.

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

Caddy, Eileen

45.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

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.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

48.

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

Churchill, Winston

49.

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

50.

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