Mankind Quotes - Page 10

• If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.

  Ouida

  Acceptance, Men, Cycling

  Ouida (1901). “Critical Studies”

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• 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

  Voice, Secret, Heroism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1362, Delphi Classics

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• Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.

  B. F. Skinner

  Men, Years, Twenties

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• A man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Men, Select, Please

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• The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fall, Past, Thinking

  James Russell Lowell (1844). “Poems”, p.178

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• I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Book, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (2010). “Journey to the Hebrides: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland & The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.183, Canongate Books

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• For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled, Where God might write anew the story of the World.

  Edward Everett Hale

  Writing, Stories, World

  Edward Everett Hale (1903). “"We, the People": A Series of Papers on Topics of Toda”

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• A true friend of mankind whose heart has but once quivered in compassion over the sufferings of the people, will understand and forgive all the impassable alluvial filth in which they are submerged, and will be able to discover the diamonds in the filth.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  True Friend, Heart, Compassion

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• We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the Last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind - the Jew has got to be exterminated!

  Robert Ley

  Struggle, Europe, Enemy

  Said in May 1943. "The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation". Book by David Cesarani, p. 224, 1994.

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• Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Respect, Men, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi (2012). “The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas”, p.169, Vintage

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• Truth is superior to man s wisdom.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Men, Superiors

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.29, Rajpal & Sons

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• I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Believe, Men

  Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, V. Geetha (2004). “Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace”, p.367, Tara Publishing

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• I have an implicit faith ... that mankind can only be saved through non-violence, which is the central teaching of the Bible, as I have understood the Bible.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Teaching, Violence, Understood

  Mahatma Gandhi (1977). “Collected Works”

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• Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Prejudice, Reason, Disposition

  Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, baron de, Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu (2005). “The Spirit of Laws”, p.294, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• The Family of Man is more than 3 billion strong. It lives in more than 100 nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise or due process of law or the Australian ballot.

  John F. Kennedy

  Christian, Strong, Men

  "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963".

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• Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the Great Powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war--or war will put an end to mankind.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Wind, Water

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

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• Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Revealing, Possession

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.211, Ravenio Books

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• There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

  Joseph Addison

  Humanity, World, Bears

  Joseph Addison (1729). “The spectator”, p.322

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• As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Powerful, Law, Judging

  "The Devil's Dictionary". Book by Ambrose Bierce, 1906.

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• Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?

  Woody Allen

  Crime, Capital Punishment, Committed

  "Love and Death". www.imdb.com. 1975.

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• More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
  I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence which could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism. It is not. It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man.

  Woody Allen

  Men, Healthy, Despair

  Side Effects "My Speech to the Graduates" (1980)

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• The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, Views, Enlightenment

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• Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Respect, Giving, Attention

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”

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• In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Society, Owing, Opinion

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.119

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• I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Able, Comfort, Female

  Samuel Johnson (1850). “The history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, a tale”, p.33

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