Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Janeway, Elizabeth

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

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

Socrates

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

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

Canetti, Elias

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

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

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

Twain, Mark

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

Twain, Mark

10.

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

Freud, Sigmund

11.

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

Hoffer, Eric

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

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

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Churchill, Winston

19.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

Sarraute, Nathalie

20.

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

Murdoch, Iris

21.

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

Einstein, Albert

22.

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.

23.

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.

24.

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

France, Anatole

25.

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

26.

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

Dante Alighieri

27.

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

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Williams, Tennessee

32.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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.

37.

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.

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.

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.

40.

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

41.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

42.

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

43.

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

Butler, Samuel

44.

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

45.

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

Barry, Dave

46.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

47.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

48.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.