“Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise.”
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Mayor Gherkin, Chapter 8, p. 120
Source: 2000s, At First Sight (2005)
Context: ... but what I eventually came to understand was that if a woman truly loves you, you can't always expect her to tell the truth. You see, women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they're not being truthful, more often than not it's because they think the truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn't mean they don't love you.
Source: The Story of My Life, Part III, Ch. 5: Literary Style
“Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.”
Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 87 (p. 314)
“All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.”
Source: The World According to Garp
Source: The Subtle Knife
“On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.”
“Along with the 97 percent of women who can see, I have never been a fan of redheaded men.”
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Source: Magic Bleeds
“Men are cheaters.
Women are not to be trusted.
And most people are dumb.”
Source: Married Lovers
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 10
Source: Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939
Source: Frankenstein
Source: Smooth Talking Stranger
“The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.”
“I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.”
“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude”
Source: The English Patient
“The history of free men is never really written by chance - but by choice. Their choice.”
Address in Pittsburgh http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (9 October 1956)
1950s
Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl
“He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.”
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
Source: A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Source: I Capture the Castle
“Men are selfish and don't think about anything else but them self." pg. 45”
Source: Froi of the Exiles
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France
Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Source: The Federalist Papers
Context: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Source: English, August: An Indian Story
“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.”
Source: Clockwork Princess
Source: Journey to the End of the Night
“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”
No. 2 (24 March 1750) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Joh1Ram.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=2&division=div1
Source: The Rambler (1750–1752)
1960s, (1963)
Source: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings
“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”
“Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.”
The Woman's Bible (1898)
Source: The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective
Source: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
Source: Mr. Perfect
“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”
Letter to J. G. Lockhart (c. 16 June 1830), in H. J. C. Grierson (ed.), Letters of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. II (1936), as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 652
“… when men like us do change, the change is profound.”
Source: If You Deceive
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
“I make that four horses and ten men just to get rid of one old woman. What did youto the King?”
Source: Howl's Moving Castle
Variant: Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address (July 18, 1867)
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)
Source: Summa Contra Gentiles
Variant: It's not what enters men's mouth that is evil," said the alchemist. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.
Source: The Alchemist
Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”
394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
As quoted in Joys and Sorrows : Reflections by Pablo Casals as told to Albert E. Kahn (1974) by Albert E. Kahn
Source: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.
Richelieu (1839)
“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
16 August 1925
Enough Rope (1926)
The first published appearance of this "ad" is on the first page of a 1949 book by Julian Lewis Watkins, The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did. (Moore Publishing Company), except with the Americanized word "honor", rather than "honour".
Stanza 3
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
