Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Robert, Fulghum

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

Lessing, Doris

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

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

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

People can be divided into three classes, the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no idea what has happened.

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

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.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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.

18.

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

Smith, Adam

19.

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

Bible

20.

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

Churchill, Winston

21.

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

22.

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

Calvino, Italo

23.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

24.

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

Gide, Andre

25.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

26.

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

27.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

28.

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

France, Anatole

29.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Rogers, Will

35.

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

36.

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

Proverb, Turkish

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Johnson

40.

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

41.

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

42.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

Crowley, Aleister

43.

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

44.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others. We need to understand our environment and our relationship to it. We need to fulfill certain inner hungers: the need for happiness, for peace of mind for wisdom.

Walters, J. Donald

45.

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

Smith, Adam

46.

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

Canetti, Elias

47.

I wish I loved the Human Race; I wish I loved its silly face; I wish I liked the way it walks; I wish I liked the way it talks; And when I'm introduced to one I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Raleigh, Sir Walter

48.

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

49.

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

Doren, Carl Van

50.

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

Fuller, Buckminster