Best 1077 quotes in «mankind quotes» category

The misery of sleep is beyond the understanding of men.

The modern human lives in a cesspool of man-made electromagnetic radiation.

The moment that all these myths were brought together in so-called 'holy books' has -without any doubt- to be seen as the most disastrous point in time in the history of mankind. From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god" (Scourges of an imaginary god)

The moment when humanity learns to tame all its primeval biases, only then it will be worth the title "Sapiens", not any earlier.

The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grit and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban boilto houses, shacks whose only romance was their names

The more we serve, the more strength, we receive to keep the good deeds.

..the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner, and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.

The motives of mankind are plainer than the motions they produce.

. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity.

the phantom of the man-who-would-understand, the lost brother, the twin --- for him did we leave our mothers, deny our sisters, over and over? did we invent him, conjure him over the charring log, nights, late, in the snowbound cabin did we dream or scry his face in the liquid embers, the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us? It was never the rapist: it was the brother, lost, the comrade/twin whose palm would bear a lifeline like our own: decisive, arrowy, forked-lightning of insatiate desire It was never the crude pestle, the blind ramrod we were after: merely a fellow-creature with natural resources equal to our own.

The problem in this world is that we have poetry but insist on living in prose.

The question “What is man?” is probably the most profound that can be asked by man. It has always been central to any system of philosophy or theology…. The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.

There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of progress. One class lives to the utility of the symbol, as the majority of men do, regarding health and wealth as the chief good. Another class live about this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist and the sensual school in philosophy. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified and these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third spiritual perception. I see in society the neophytes of all these classes, the class especially of young men who in their best knowledge of the sign have a misgiving that there is yet an unattained substance and they grope and sigh and aspire long in dissatisfaction, the sand-blind adorers of the symbol meantime chirping and scoffing and trampling them down. I see moreover that the perfect man - one to a millennium - if so many, traverses the whole scale and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty; and lastly wears it lightly as a robe which he can easily throw off, for he sees the reality and divine splendor of the inmost nature bursting through each chink and cranny.

There are three heavens. The first heaven is the earth and the world of mankind, and the third heaven is where God dwells. However, the second heaven is a place of time and space, where both demons and angels tread, plot, and fight against each other.

There he is then, the unfortunate brute, quite miserable because of me, for whom there is nothing to be done, and he so anxious to help, so used to giving orders and to being obeyed. There he is, ever since I came into the world, possibly at his instigation, I wouldn't put it past him, commanding me to be well, you know, in every way, no complaints at all, with as much success as if he were shouting at a lump of inanimate matter.

There is beauty in the soul of every man.

There is divinity within every soul.

There is no answer for life, creation, or mankind. We make the answer.

there is no God, but don't tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night

There is no law greater to man than man's very own nature of being.

There is no particular merit in being nice to one's fellow man... We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is a result of our emotions - love apathy, charity of malice - and what part is predetermines by the constant power play among individuals. True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buries from view), consists of attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental débâcle, a débâcle so fundamental all others stem from it.

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787]

There must be a bad chromosome somewhere in man that urges him to wound that which he can't conquer, deface that which is more beautiful, misunderstand and befoul the work of another.

The sandpaper of Greg's laugh fascinated Lexi as much as it frightened her. It was why she always thought of him as the Sandman, an interpretation not as sinister as E. T. A. Hoffman's but one that seemed to match, suddenly, in its role as a harbinger of death. Greg's voice rebounded around the building, dry and abrasive. Mirthless laughter is one of mankind's trademark noises. It's been used to mask pain for centuries.

[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.

The symbology of the sphinx… is to remind mankind for eternity that he is nothing more than an animal with a brain.

The world doesn't need a good woman who is meekly obedient to the uncivilized social norms that advocate female inferiority. The world needs those bad women who can think for themselves, to break the primeval norms of the society that consistently drag the human civilization back to the stone-age.

The world needs great inspires, who will encourage every living soul to reach their highest potential. You can be one.

They know how to eat, shit, drive their cars, do menial work, watch television and produce equally stupid spawns of themselves; what the hell are they doing to help mankind?

They say God appeared in history and used it for his purposes, but if that was so he had no pity for men.

This one word “Love” has revolutionized the whole planet in an evolutionary way. Without this, none of us might have been born.

This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.

THREE BASIC TRUTHS Three things have a limited threshold: Time, pain, and death. While truth, love, and knowledge – Are boundless. Three things are needed For humanity to co-exist: Truth, peace and basic needs. Everything else - Is irrelevant.

TO ALL MANKIND Speak kind words to mankind and the unkind will attack you. Speak common sense using any of your senses, and you will be attacked by the senseless. Speak truth, and you will be attacked by the untruthful. Speak about absolutely nothing, and absolutely nothing will speak back, but then nothing at all will ever change.

To explain this a little further: Only the soul and the body are the natural constituent parts of men and women. The SPIRIT is not in the fundamental nature of humans but is the supernatural gift of God, TO BE FOUND IN CHRISTIANS ONLY.

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is." [The Title Always Comes Last; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]

Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

To što mi radimo da bismo si tobože zajamčili život, radi i noj kad gurne glavu u pijesak da ne vidi kako će ga ubiti. Samo što smo mi gori od noja, jer zbog neizvjesnog života u neizvijesnoj budućnosti upropaštavamo život koji sigurno imamo u sadašnjosti. Obmana je u pogrešnoj pretpostavci da sigurnost života proizlazi iz borbe s drugim ljudima. Mi smo do te mjere navikli na prividnu sigurnost svojeg života i svoje imovine, da i ne primjećujemo što sve zbog toga gubimo. A gubimo sve - sav život. Sav život gutaju brige, tako da od pravoga života ne ostaje ništa. Dovoljno je na trenutak se otrgnuti od navika i trijezno promotriti kakav je naš život: sve što radimo u ime prividne sigurnosti života uopće nije zato da bi nam život bio siguran, nego samo zato što nam treba nešto čime bismo se toliko mogli zaokupiti da zaboravimo kako život i nije i ne može biti siguran.

Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.

Trying to succeed in life without losing your humanity it's a difficult task. However, any man with high sense of humanity, should be able to rise above any illusion.

Unity is a beast in itself. If a wolf sees two little boys playing in the woods on one side, and a big strong man on the other, it will go to the one who stands alone.

Unity is a beast in itself.

Unsere Fähigkeit zur Verantwortung ist [...] nicht etwas, das durch Philosophen, Politiker oder Geistliche quasi von außen in unser Leben hineingebracht würde, sie gehört vielmehr zum Grundbestand des Humanum. Wir verlieren uns selbst, wenn wir diesem Prinzip nicht zu folgen vermögen.

War is the plague of mankind; I am and remain in solidarity with eternal peace.

Watch out, every day miraculous encounter with you and God!

We all belong to the world, and the world belongs to us all.

We are all human, so we may trespass each other. But there is always grace for forgiveness.

We are all wonderful souls.