Top 82 Human Greatness Quotes
#1. Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.
Leo Strauss
#2. The moment one conceives the meaning of human greatness is the moment when one understands the baseness, the triviality and the meanness of the material from which we have to mould it.
Bill Hopkins
#3. Every luminary in the constellation of human greatness, like the stars, comes out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God.
Mary Baker Eddy
#4. The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.
Max Lerner
#5. There is only one road to human greatness: through the school of hard knocks.
Albert Einstein
#6. Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met.
William, Saroyan
#7. Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.
Leo Strauss
#8. The short-goal habit is key to larger success and is at the root of human greatness. Life is think and do, think and do, think and do. Small steps can be greater than great leaps.
Robert Genn
#9. Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.
Anne Frank
#11. Take care, father," said Bulloch gently, "that what you call murder and robbery may not really be war and conquest, those sacred foundations of empires, those sources of all human virtues and all human greatness.
Anatole France
#12. My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it - all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity - , but to love it ...
Friedrich Nietzsche
#13. [The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
Edward Gibbon
#14. Words alone cannot fully convey the realities of the soul or the greatness of the human spirit.
William Shirley
#15. I believe in the goodness of fellow human beings. We have a true desire for greatness and genuine good intention to be helpful to others. That's enough. Change is possible.
Ilchi Lee
#16. Maybe we have to sin, to know ourselves human, faulty and flawed, before there is any possibility of greatness." - Nik
Madeleine L'Engle
#17. The human rainbow had been mutilated by machismo, racism, militarism and a lot of other isms, who have been terribly killing our greatness, our possible greatness, our possible beauty.
Eduardo Galeano
#18. I think some of the most celebrated moments in human achievement should be those times when everything is going against a person and they are down in the dumps but they simply choose to get up. That's real greatness!
Ryan Hall
#19. Before you were born, and were still too tiny for the human eye to see, you won the race for life from among 250 million competitors. And yet, how fast you have forgotten your strength, when your very existence is proof of your greatness.
Suzy Kassem
#20. My short answer would be that there is no greatest jazz musician of the century. Jazz, like any valid art form, finds its greatness in its expression of the human spirit, and, to me, this can't be reduced to a contest.
Bennie Wallace
#21. The true measure of greatness of a human being is their ability to express love in relationship.
Walter Russell
#22. Every human has a seed of greatness buried in a gift needed by the world.
Myles Munroe
#23. It is great, and there is no other greatness-to make one nook of God's Creation more fruitful, better, more worthy of God; to make some human heart a little wiser, manlier, happier-more blessed.
Thomas Carlyle
#24. That is the dignity of America, the reason she exists, the condition of her survival, yes, the ultimate test of her greatness: to respect every human person, especially the weak and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.
Pope John Paul II
#25. Because we have a sense of completion within us, and because we have the will and desire to reach that state of completion, human beings have the potential for greatness and can become greater at any time.
Ilchi Lee
#27. It is unavoidable that if we learn more about a great man's life, we shall also hear of occasions on which he has done no better than we, and has in fact come nearer to us as a human being.
Sigmund Freud
#28. If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad?
Alphonse De Lamartine
#29. The use of great men is to serve the little men, to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth.
Theodore Parker
#30. So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.
Voltaire
#31. Giving glory is a natural human response to witnessing greatness, which is why our world is infatuated with celebrities. We are addicted to greatness. And when we see it, we ascribe worth and value to it. Our
J.R. Vassar
#32. The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
Mahatma Gandhi
#33. We are running ourselves into a damaged earth. But I am optimistic. I believe that we can change; we must change. As a human race, we are very young and quite primitive. The sooner we learn the greatness of humanity the better off we will all be.
John Astin
#35. They say our suffering is an inevitable part of the human condition; just accept it. But the greatest human skill is that of a choice maker.
Bryant McGill
#36. As growth-minded leaders, they start with a belief in human potential and development - both their own and other people's. Instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness, they use it as an engine of growth - for themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole.
Carol S. Dweck
#37. The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being.
Pope John Paul II
#38. There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.
Richard Le Gallienne
#39. A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.
Joyce Cary
#40. Within you, within all human beings, is a seed of greatness that makes their kind quake with fear.
Thomm Quackenbush
#41. Who is there that can adequately gauge the greatness of the humility, gentleness, self-surrender, revealed by the Lord of majesty in assuming human nature, in accepting the punishment of death, the shame of the cross?
Saint Bernard
#42. Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness ... For you see, greatness is a measure of one's spirit, not a result of one's rank in human affairs.
Sherman Glenn Finesilver
#43. Every person who was a genius, a mental giant, or a great contributor to the human race watered the seeds of his greatness from the well of isolation, until the seed became a plant, and then finally, a formidable tree.
Aaidh Ibn Abdullah Al-Qarni
#44. If you admire greatness in another human being, it is your own greatness you are seeing.
Debbie Ford
#45. And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
Joseph Conrad
#46. Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.
R.J. Palacio
#47. One of the bravest, grandest champions of human liberty the world has ever seen.
{Darrow on the great Robert Ingersoll}
Clarence Darrow
#48. It's great to be great, but its greater to be human.
Will Rogers
#49. Rise to become human again, my friend. Become the human, that talks humans, acts humans and lives human.
Abhijit Naskar
#50. The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp upon his race.
Samuel Smiles
#51. Humility is the proper attitude towards all true greatness, including one's own greatness as a human being, but above all towards the greatness which is not oneself, which is beyond one's self
Karol Wojtyla
#52. Idris: Are all people like this?
The Doctor: Like what?
Idris: So much bigger on the inside.
Neil Gaiman
#54. The greatness of the human being consists in this:
that it is capable of the universe.
Thomas Aquinas
#55. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
Alfred North Whitehead
#56. Fame is nothing but the sum of all the misunderstandings that cluster around a new name ... Wherever a human achievement becomes truly great, it seeks to hide its face in the lap of general, nameless greatness.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#57. Monuments and archaeological pieces serve as testimonies of man's greatness and establish a dialogue between civilizations showing the extent to which human beings are linked.
Vicente Fox
#58. The greatness of nations is shown by their strict regard for human rights, rigid enforcement of the law without bias, and just administration of the affairs of life.
Mary Burnett Talbert
#59. "Not being virulently and overtly racist against black people" and "treating gay people like human beings" are necessary conditions of greatness.
Mallory Ortberg
#60. A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.
Vaclav Havel
#61. Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.
Wilma Rudolph
#62. We're all human. We have our foibles, we've made mistakes, and yet there is still greatness.
Michael Ansara
#63. Jazz music celebrates life! Human life; the range of it, the absurdity of it, the ignorance of it, the greatness of it, the intelligence of it, the sexuality of it, the profundity of it. And it deals with it. In all of its ... It deals with it!
Wynton Marsalis
#64. Every hammer has the innate capacity to strike a nail. Every human mind has the innate capacity for greatness. But not every hammer is properly used, nor is every human mind.
Brian Herbert
#65. When I write fiction, I struggle to decide the fate of two people created by my mind and spend countless hours to give them a happy ending. God, the Almighty has created infinite human beings till date and runs all our lives with such ease. He is the BEST WRITER of all.
Shahla Khan
#66. If I could be useful to another human being, even for a day, that would be a great thing. It would be greater than all the big thoughts I could have at the university.
Muhammad Yunus
#67. As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi
#68. America you are beautiful ... and blessed ... The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless. If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life.
Pope John Paul II
#69. The willingness to challenge hardships taps the power within human beings to transform even a place of tragedy into a stage for fulfilling one's mission.
Daisaku Ikeda
#70. the seed of greatness exists in every human being. Whether it sprouts or not is our choice.
Sean Patrick
#71. My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary - but love it
Friedrich Nietzsche
#72. The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth.
Maria Montessori
#73. The greatness of the human being is not in the reincarnation of the world but in the reincarnation of ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi
#74. Greatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humility ... A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL.
Kenneth Patchen
#75. Greatness after all, in spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small.
Phillips Brooks
#76. One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human biengs.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#77. When greatness descends from its lofty pedestal, it assumes human dimensions.
Louise Colet
#78. Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has the vagueness of greatness about it.
Amelia Barr
#79. That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.
John Keats
#80. Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
Voltaire
#81. As human beings, we're capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life.
Sharon Salzberg
#82. Every day, people settle for less than they desearve. They are only parially living or at best living a partial life. Every human being has the potential for greatness.
Bo Bennett
