Mankind Quotes

Most popular mankind quotes

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and malice, "human" might be a greater insult. - Isaac Asimov quote.
To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and malice, "human" might be a greater insult.

cynical

Man is an animal and should live in accordance with his species. - Carl Linnaeus quote.
Man is an animal and should live in accordance with his species.
Man is a social animal formed to please in society. - Montesquieu quote.
Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

society

I'm learning about people the hard way, by being one. - Ashleigh Brilliant quote.
I'm learning about people the hard way, by being one.

funny

There are three classes of people: lovers of wisdom, lovers of humor, lovers of gain. - Plato quote.
There are three classes of people: lovers of wisdom, lovers of humor, lovers of gain.
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. - Anne Frank quote.
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

idealist Goodness

There are no perfect human beings, and there never will be. - Henry Miller quote.
There are no perfect human beings, and there never will be.
Everybody is all right, really. - A. A. Milne quote.
Everybody is all right, really.
We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. - Suzanne Collins quote.
We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.

Hunger Games

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

famous

Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. - Euripides quote.
Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes.

human nature

When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? - Henry David Thoreau quote.
When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
Man is by nature a political animal. - Aristotle quote.
Man is by nature a political animal.

man the animal politics

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others.

brotherhood of man

Man is a social animal. - Seneca quote.
Man is a social animal.

man the animal

Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything! - Fyodor Dostoyevsky quote.
Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything!
The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are. - Franklin D. Roosevelt quote.
The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.

confidence

People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. - Linda Ellerbee quote.
People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.

equality

Every human being is worthwhile. - Pope Francis quote.
Every human being is worthwhile.
Pope Francis Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
Kids are always the only future the human race has. - William Saroyan quote.
Kids are always the only future the human race has.

children

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. - Thurgood Marshall quote.
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

brotherhood of man

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and outcomes sighs, laughter, and dreams. - Nicholas Kazantzakis quote.
What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and outcomes sighs, laughter, and dreams.
I am human; nothing human is alien to me. - Terence quote.
I am human; nothing human is alien to me.
When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself. - Luigi Pirandello quote.
When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself.
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote.
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

cynical youth

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. - William Osler quote.
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

drugs

The meek shall inherit the earth.
— Psalm 37:11

egotism society biblical

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. - Eric Hoffer quote.
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

conformity

The human race consists of the dangerously insane and such as are not. - Mark Twain quote.
The human race consists of the dangerously insane and such as are not.

insanity

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

life

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

life

Man is not made for defeat. - Ernest Hemingway quote.
Man is not made for defeat.

losing

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. - William Hazlitt quote.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

man the animal crying priorities

Man is the only animal that laughs, drinks when he is not thirsty, and makes love at all seasons of the year. - Voltaire quote.
Man is the only animal that laughs, drinks when he is not thirsty, and makes love at all seasons of the year.

priorities

There's nothing funnier than the human animal. - Walt Disney quote.
There's nothing funnier than the human animal.
Animals have these advantages over man: they have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. - Voltaire quote.
Animals have these advantages over man: they have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

civilization

Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die.

environment

Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment. - Rene Dubos quote.
Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment.

environment

Men are born equal but they are also born different. - Erich Fromm quote.
Men are born equal but they are also born different.
No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod ... Any man's death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley quote.
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

propaganda

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. - Oscar Wilde quote.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Of mankind in general, the parts are greater than the whole. - Aristotle quote.
Of mankind in general, the parts are greater than the whole.
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future. - Antoine de Rivarol quote.
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. - Benjamin Disraeli quote.
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men.
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top. - Henry Ward Beecher quote.
Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. - John Steinbeck quote.
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have. - Jean-Paul Sartre quote.
Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.
I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries. - Jules Renard quote.
I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. - Charles Darwin quote.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man. - Sophocles quote.
Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man.
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
— Matthew 25:40

biblical society

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. - Oscar Wilde quote.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

the world

The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. - William Faulkner quote.
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day. - Thornton Wilder quote.
Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.
There's no indispensable man. - Franklin D. Roosevelt quote.
There's no indispensable man.
The proper study of Mankind is Man. - Alexander Pope quote.
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. - Samuel Butler quote.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

eating man the animal

Study mankind. Learn to use men without surrendering to them. Have confidence in those who, if necessary, are courageous enough to contradict you. - Catherine the Great quote.
Study mankind. Learn to use men without surrendering to them. Have confidence in those who, if necessary, are courageous enough to contradict you.
I don't think we have to teach people how to be human. I think we have to teach them how not to be inhumane. - Eldridge Cleaver quote.
I don't think we have to teach people how to be human. I think we have to teach them how not to be inhumane.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. - Aldous Huxley quote.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

pets dogs

Woman was God's second mistake. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
Woman was God's second mistake.

women

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, and at eighty nothing. - Baltasar Gracian quote.
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, and at eighty nothing.

age 20 aging age 70 age 50 age 40 age 30

Though in a wilderness, a man is never alone. - Sir Thomas Browne quote.
Though in a wilderness, a man is never alone.

solitude

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.  Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. - Octavio Paz quote.
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.  Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another.

solitude

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. - Samuel Coleridge quote.
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil.

aspiration

One does not become fully human painlessly. - Rollo May quote.
One does not become fully human painlessly.
Rollo May Existential-Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology

becoming growth pain

Man is the only animal that can be bored. - Erich Fromm quote.
Man is the only animal that can be bored.

man the animal boredom

My definition of man is "a cooking animal." - James Boswell quote.
My definition of man is "a cooking animal."
James Boswell The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson

cooking man the animal

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

death interdependence

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within. - Eleanor Roosevelt quote.
No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

defeat

Men are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads. - Michel de Montaigne quote.
Men are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.

disagreement

Man is what his dreams are. - Benjamin Mays quote.
Man is what his dreams are.

dreams

Man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey. - Lord Byron quote.
Man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey.

eating

Man is a gaming animal.  He must be always trying to get the better in something or other.

gambling man the animal

Hope is renewed each time that you see a person you know, who is deeply involved in the struggle of life, helping another person. You are the unaffected witness and must agree that there is hope for mankind. - Albert Schweitzer quote.
Hope is renewed each time that you see a person you know, who is deeply involved in the struggle of life, helping another person. You are the unaffected witness and must agree that there is hope for mankind.

helping others

Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life. - Jean Giraudoux quote.
Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life.
Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. - Stephen Hawking quote.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
I think it is more important to recognize that another human being is a human being, than to recognize male and female.  Most of our activities have no more to do with sex than they have to do with ancestors.
Rose Wilder Lane Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship
Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures. - François Mauriac quote.
Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures.

know yourself the human condition

I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection. - Luther Burbank quote.
I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.
Man may be defined as the animal that can say "I," that can be aware of himself as a separate entity. - Erich Fromm quote.
Man may be defined as the animal that can say "I," that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

man the animal individuality

Man is nothing but contradiction. - Henri-Frédéric Amiel quote.
Man is nothing but contradiction.
Man is a history-making creature. - Wystan Auden quote.
Man is a history-making creature.
Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. - Charles Darwin quote.
Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
A man is a god in ruins. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
A man is a god in ruins.
Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God. - Benjamin Spock quote.
Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.
Benjamin Spock Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior
Man is a military animal, 
Glories in gunpowder, and loves parade;
Prefers them to all things. - Philip James Bailey quote.
Man is a military animal, 
Glories in gunpowder, and loves parade;
Prefers them to all things.

man the animal

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave. - Sir Thomas Browne quote.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

man the animal

Man is by his constitution a religious animal. - Edmund Burke quote.
Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

man the animal

Man is a tool-using animal. - Thomas Carlyle quote.
Man is a tool-using animal.

man the animal

Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. - Simone de Beauvoir quote.
Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word.

man the animal words

Man is a successful animal, that's all.

man the animal

Man is a social animal who dislikes his fellow man. - Eugène Delacroix quote.
Man is a social animal who dislikes his fellow man.

man the animal

Man is a tool-making animal. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
Man is a tool-making animal.

man the animal

Man is the only animal who does not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. - Erich Fromm quote.
Man is the only animal who does not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

man the animal

Yet there is still this difference between man and all other animals—he is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. - Henry George quote.
Yet there is still this difference between man and all other animals—he is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

man the animal

Man is a make-believe animal—he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part. - William Hazlitt quote.
Man is a make-believe animal—he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

man the animal

Man, the aristocrat among animals. - Heinrich Heine quote.
Man, the aristocrat among animals.

man the animal

Man, biologically considered...is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species. - William James quote.
Man, biologically considered...is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.

man the animal

Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours its own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich upon the poor. - Thomas Jefferson quote.
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours its own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich upon the poor.

man the animal wealth

Many other animals have feelings.  What distinguishes our species is thought. - Carl Sagan quote.
Many other animals have feelings.  What distinguishes our species is thought.

thinking man the animal

Man is a clever animal, who behaves like an imbecile. - Albert Schweitzer quote.
Man is a clever animal, who behaves like an imbecile.

man the animal

Man is a reasoning animal. - Seneca quote.
Man is a reasoning animal.

man the animal

I guess a man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it. - John Steinbeck quote.
I guess a man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.

man the animal

We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. - Lewis Thomas quote.
We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal.
Lewis Thomas The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

man the animal worry

Man is the only animal that blushes.  Or needs to. - Mark Twain quote.
Man is the only animal that blushes.  Or needs to.

man the animal

Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of Nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him. - H. G. Wells quote.
Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of Nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.

nature man the animal

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal. - Rebecca West quote.
Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.

man the animal

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. - Oscar Wilde quote.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

man the animal

Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind. - Thomas Merton quote.
Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind.
We may go down in history as an elegant technological society which underwent biological disintegration through lack of economic understanding.

environment

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.

environment progress

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. - Anton Chekhov quote.
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.

environment

Man is a blind, witless, low brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth.

environment

Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom—and lakes die.

environment

Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution, and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. - Rene Dubos quote.
Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution, and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.

environment

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. - George Bernard Shaw quote.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

glory

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

intelligence

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence. - Charles Darwin quote.
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities ... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

evolution

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true. - Napoleon Hill quote.
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. - John F. Kennedy quote.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

the world

The two most discontented beings are humans and cancer cells.
We are an intelligent species because we defined ourselves that way.

intelligence

The more humans try to become demi-gods, the more they become full monsters.