Mankind Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Of all things known to mortals wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all.

Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.

Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God's eyes.

Mankind by their industry, and by the influence of good laws, have rendered the earth more proper for their abode.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.

George Bernard Shaw

Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of idealogy [sic], that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art etc.

Friedrich Engels

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician's mind -
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind.

Emily Dickinson

This is the patent-age of new inventions For killing bodies, and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions; Sir Humphrey Davy's lantern, by which coals Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions, Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles, Are ways to benefit mankind, as true, Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.

By educating the young generation along the right lines, the People's State will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destinies of the world.

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!

Henry David Thoreau

Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain.

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

Bertrand Russell

Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Bertrand Russell

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

John F. Kennedy

There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind... there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

Bertrand Russell

There is no distrust of men and mankind in me. They will answer before God, so why should I worry?

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods.

In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him.

George Bernard Shaw

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Twas a special gift of God that speech was given to mankind; for through the Word, and not by force, wisdom governs.