Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

- Machiavelli, Niccolo

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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

Williams, Tennessee

Mankind is made great or little by its own will.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Mead, Margaret

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.

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

Caddy, Eileen

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

Socrates

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Terence

10.

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Donne, John

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

13.

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

Churchill, Winston

14.

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

Hoffer, Eric

15.

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

16.

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

Kant, Immanuel

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Robert, Fulghum

21.

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

22.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

23.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

24.

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

Lessing, Doris

25.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Sterling, John

26.

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge.

Blake, William

27.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

28.

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

29.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

Twain, Mark

31.

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

Reagan, Ronald

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Twain, Mark

35.

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

Sumner, Charles

36.

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

Foucault, Michel

37.

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

Bible

38.

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Pilgrim, Peace

39.

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

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

France, Anatole

43.

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

Einstein, Albert

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

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

46.

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

Johnson

47.

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

48.

Man is a useless passion.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

49.

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

Butler, Samuel

50.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Beecher, Henry Ward