Lucretius Quotes

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?

I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Do you understand?

To err from the right path is common to mankind.

Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest.

Time had a way of moulding people into shapes they themselves no longer recognised.

The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel - and all of them are right.

We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.

The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

A rational nature admits of nothing but what is serviceable to the rest of mankind.

And you will, by the dignity of your Conduct, afford occasion for Posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to Mankind, had this day been wanting, the World had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.

The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate.

That which is inherent in man is his virtue.

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Human beings invent just as many ways to sabotage their lives as to improve them.

If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

To amend mankind, moralists should show them man, not as he is, but as he ought to be.

The great fault of mankind is that it will not think.

But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?

It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind

Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.

Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind.