Quotes about men
page 15
“Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.”
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.
"The Creative Process" (1962) originally published in The National Culture Center's Creative America (1962) and later published in The Price of the Ticket (1985)
“Time is the best preserver of righteous men.”
Fragment 159; page 387
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 185.
Letter to General Gates (7 September 1776), in Battle of Valcour on Lake Champlain, October 11th, 1776 by Peter Sailly Palmer(1876) p. 5
“The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.”
As quoted in obituary '"Reinhold Niebuhr Is Dead; Protestant Theologian, 78" by Alden Whitman in The New York Times (2 June 1971) http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/niebuhr.pdf
Letter from Oliver Cowder to W.W. Phelps (Letter I), (September 7, 1834). Published in Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol. I. No. 1. Kirtland, Ohio, October, 1834. Published in Letters by Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps on the Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Liverpool, 1844.
“Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Eric Voegelin (1999), The Collected Works, Vol. 31: Hitler and the Germans, edited and translated by Detlev Clemens and Brandon Purcell, ISBN 0826212166, p. 200.
Wir sind im Wesentlichen noch dieselben Menschen, wie die des Zeitalters der Reformation: wie sollte es auch anders sein? Aber dass wir uns einige Mittel nicht mehr erlauben, um mit ihnen unsrer Meinung zum Siege zu verhelfen, das hebt uns gegen jene Zeit ab und beweist, dass wir einer höhern Cultur angehören. Wer jetzt noch, in der Art der Reformations-Menschen, Meinungen mit Verdächtigungen, mit Wuthausbrüchen bekämpft und niederwirft, verräth deutlich, dass er seine Gegner verbrannt haben würde, falls er in anderen Zeiten gelebt hätte, und dass er zu allen Mitteln der Inquisition seine Zuflucht genommen haben würde, wenn er als Gegner der Reformation gelebt hätte. Diese Inquisition war damals vernünftig, denn sie bedeutete nichts Anderes, als den allgemeinen Belagerungszustand, welcher über den ganzen Bereich der Kirche verhängt werden musste, und der, wie jeder Belagerungszustand, zu den äussersten Mitteln berechtigte, unter der Voraussetzung nämlich (welche wir jetzt nicht mehr mit jenen Menschen theilen), dass man die Wahrheit, in der Kirche, habe, und um jeden Preis mit jedem Opfer zum Heile der Menschheit bewahren müsse. Jetzt aber giebt man Niemandem so leicht mehr zu, dass er die Wahrheit habe: die strengen Methoden der Forschung haben genug Misstrauen und Vorsicht verbreitet, so dass Jeder, welcher gewaltthätig in Wort und Werk Meinungen vertritt, als ein Feind unserer jetzigen Cultur, mindestens als ein zurückgebliebener empfunden wird. In der That: das Pathos, dass man die Wahrheit habe, gilt jetzt sehr wenig im Verhältniss zu jenem freilich milderen und klanglosen Pathos des Wahrheit-Suchens, welches nicht müde wird, umzulernen und neu zu prüfen.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 633
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 7
2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)
1910s, The Rights of the People to Rule (1912)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter
Source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944), Chapter III: Etatism
Reported in George Shelley Hughs, Ancient Civilizations (1896), p. 596.
“The Earth does not want new continents, but new men.”
Ce ne sont pas de nouveaux continents qu'il faut à la terre, mais de nouveaux hommes!
Part I, ch. XVIII: Vanikoro (Boston: Geo. M. Smith & Co., 1873, p. 101) (Ch. XIX in the French text)
Tr. Walter James Miller (1966)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
Variant: The planet doesn't need new continents, it needs new men.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 18.
“Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.”
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 182.
1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Gazette version
“Great causes and little men go ill together.”
The Indian Annual Register Vol.1 (January-June 1939)
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
“I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.”
As quoted in "Roosevelt The Greatest Outdoor Man" by Arthur K. Willyoung in Outing Vol. 74, No. 6 (September 1919), p. 353
1910s
“O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,
Where bowels are in other bowels clos'd:
Where fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;
Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.
'Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides
The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,
If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,
And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:
What else is this, but to devour our guests,
And barb'rously renew Cyclopean feasts!
We, by destroying life, our life sustain;
And gorge th' ungodly maw with meats obscene.”
Heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi
ingestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus
alteriusque animans animantis vivere leto!
Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas, optima matrum,
terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo
vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum,
nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis
et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris!
Book XV, 88–95 (from Wikisource)
Metamorphoses (Transformations)
"Our Vanishing Wildlife", in The Outlook (25 January 1913); republished in Literary Essays (vol. 12 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 46, p. 420
1910s
As quoted by J. P. Stern in an interview conducted by Bryan Magee in The Great Philosophers : A History of Western Philosophy (1987)
Disputed
Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), pp. 131-132
Anti-Education (1872)
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Attributed at a few sites to a debate in Peoria, Illinois with Stephen Douglas on 16 October 1858. No historical record of such a debate actually exists, though there was a famous set of speeches by both in Peoria on 16 October 1854, but transcripts of Lincoln's speech http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=cleaver;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln2;node=lincoln2%3A282 on that date do not indicate that he made such a statement. It in fact comes from a speech made by Douglas in the third debate http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=fejee;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln3;node=lincoln3%3A17 against Lincoln at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858.
Misattributed
Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 370-71.
Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées.
Dialogue xiv, Le Chapon et la Poularde (l763); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Citas
“Some Mens Memory is like a Box, where a Man should mingle his Jewels with his old Shoes.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
“The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
War is a racket (1935)
War is a racket (1935)
Source: Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII
“If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.”
Lord Goring, Act IV
An Ideal Husband (1895)
Theodoros Kolokotronis' memoirs (1846), quoted in: Jim Potts (2010) The Ionian Islands and Epirus: A Cultural History, p. 176
Remarks by President Obama at Naturalization Ceremony for Servicemembers at The War Memorial of Korea in Seoul, Republic of Korea at April 25, 2014 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/25/remarks-president-obama-naturalization-ceremony-servicemembers
2014
Context: What makes us Americans is something more than just the circumstances of birth, what we look like, what God we worship, but rather it is a joyful spirit of citizenship. Citizenship demands participation and responsibility, and service to our country and to one another. And few embody that more than our men and women in uniform.
1910s, The World Movement (1910)
1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness
My Twisted World (2014), Final Days
“Men will not forget that Pancho Villa was loyal to the cause of the people.”
As quoted in Pancho Villa: Rebel of the Mexican Revolution (2006) by Mary Englar
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 532.
“I see how happiness and misery lie inseparably in the deserts of good and bad men.”
Video, inquam, quae sit vel felicitas vel miseria in ipsis proborum atque improborum meritis constituta.
Prose V, line 1; translation by W.V. Cooper
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book IV
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
" The Ecclesiastical Ministry http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/voleccle.html"
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
“Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them.”
Reported in "The Viking Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection" By Wystan Hugh Auden, Louis Kronenberger (1981)
“Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.”
Book I, sec. 1
Tetrabiblos
Education, p. 57, c 1903, 1952, The Ellen G. White Publications; Pacific Press Publishing Association.
Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), V
Introduction, p. 4
1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.
To Leon Goldensohn, May 2, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.
2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)
2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)
1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
Final lines, Ch. III : An afternoon party at the house of the Princesse de Guermantes"; translation by Stephen Hudson, Time Regained (1931)
If enough time was left to me to complete my work, my first concern would be to describe the people in it, even at the risk of making them seem colossal and unnatural creatures, as occupying a place far larger than the very limited one reserved for them in space, a place in fact almost infinitely extended, since they are in simultaneous contact, like giants immersed in the years, with such distant periods of their lives, between which so many days have taken up their place – in Time.
Translation by Ian Patterson, Finding Time Again (2002)
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927)
Letter to Élie Diodati (2 January 1638), as translated in The Private Life of Galileo : Compiled primarily from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter, Sister Maria Celeste (1870) by Mary Allan-Olney, p. 279
Other quotes
2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)
Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 58
In a statement about Jesus Christ. While exiled on the rock of St. Helena, Napoleon called Count Montholon to his side and asked him, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" Upon the Count declining to respond Napoleon countered. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods http://books.google.com/books?id=jSI9HnMHdPsC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=napoleon+jesus+among+gods&source=bl&ots=CdsDSjamnm&sig=K3l7Ek972r7pyEFT681lbf3PVSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nBqhUf3RL4au9AS37ICwCQ&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA, p. 149, in Henry Parry Liddon (1868) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. New edition. https://books.google.com/books?id=IcINAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA148&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 147-148, and in Henry Parry Liddon (1869) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. Fourth edition. https://ia800203.us.archive.org/15/items/divinityofourlord00libbrich/divinityofourlord00libbrich.pdf pp. 147-148.
Attributed
Preface
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)
“The loss of…honest and industrious men's lives cannot be valued at any price.”
Ch. 3.
Barack Obama: "Remarks Prior to Departure from Accra, Ghana," July 11, 2009. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=86393&st=&st1=
2009
Quoted in Survey of Contemporary Literature (1977) by Frank Northen Magill, p. 4263
C’est une grande question parmi eux s’ils [les africains] sont descendus des singes ou si les singes sont venus d’eux. Nos sages ont dit que l’homme est l’image de Dieu: voilà une plaisante image de l’Être éternel qu’un nez noir épaté, avec peu ou point d’intelligence! Un temps viendra, sans doute, où ces animaux sauront bien cultiver la terre, l’embellir par des maisons et par des jardins, et connaître la route des astres il faut du temps pour tout.
Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/21/10AMABED.html
Citas
“It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”
The Labours of Hercules (1967)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)
1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)
1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)