Motivational Quotes

Humankind

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

Best Quotes about Humankind

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

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.

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

Hoffer, Eric

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

Lincoln, Abraham

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

Mises, Ludwig Von

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

Sumner, Charles

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

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

Janeway, Elizabeth

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.

Kent, Sir Arthur

10.

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

Socrates

11.

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

Johnson

12.

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

Foucault, Michel

13.

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

Gide, Andre

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Murdoch, Iris

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

19.

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

Proverb, Turkish

20.

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

21.

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

Holmes, John Andrew

22.

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

Sarraute, Nathalie

23.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

I am a member of the rabble in good standing.

Pegler, Westbrook

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Kant, Immanuel

29.

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

30.

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

Caddy, Eileen

31.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Schlegel, Friedrich

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Bacon, Francis

35.

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

Sumner, Charles

36.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

37.

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

Calvino, Italo

38.

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

Machiavelli, Niccolo

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

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

Steinbeck, John

41.

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

42.

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

Williams, Tennessee

43.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Landor, Walter Savage

44.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another

Churchill, Winston

45.

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

46.

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

Rolf, Ida P.

47.

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

Robert, Fulghum

48.

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

49.

After all there is but one race -- humanity.

Moore, George

50.

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