“A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
1783, p. 500
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
Source: The Life of Johnson, Vol 4
“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History
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Sören Kierkegaard309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855Related quotes
“A man who knows how little he knows is well, a man who knows how much he knows is sick.”
Witter Bynner (1881–1968) American author
The Way of Life, According to Laotzu, 1944.
Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter
Source: Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer
Preface to Ecuador (1929)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
April 12, 1908
India's Rebirth
John Keats Letter to George and Thomas Keats
Letter to George and Thomas Keats (December 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)
Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) Social psychologist
Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 205
Context: The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.