Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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 useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

Williams, Tennessee

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.

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

Steinbeck, John

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

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

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

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

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

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Mead, Margaret

11.

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

Foucault, Michel

12.

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

Baumgardy, R. M.

13.

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

Doren, Carl Van

14.

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.

15.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

16.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Temple, Sir William

17.

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

Calvino, Italo

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Sumner, Charles

21.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mencken, H. L.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

26.

Man is an ape with possibilities.

Andrews, Roy Chapman

27.

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

28.

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

Wilde, Oscar

29.

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

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Gide, Andre

32.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Kant, Immanuel

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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

39.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

43.

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

44.

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

45.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

46.

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

Johnson

47.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Weil, Simone

48.

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

Caddy, Eileen

49.

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

50.

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.