Quotes about men
page 27
“All men are liars. All women are liars, too.”
Source: Burn for Me
Source: Quoted, The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 7
Vol. I, p. 188
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)
“Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle.”
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
“The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.”
Source: The Master and Margarita
"They Thought They Were Better" in TIME magazine (21 July 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924295,00.html
“Men do not know what they do not know, and women should not tell them.”
“There are lots of real men out there - men who could fall in love with you at the drop of a hat.”
Source: Message in a Bottle
Source: Tempt Me at Twilight
“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.”
Source: " A Wind Storm in the Forests of the Yuba http://books.google.com/books?id=zj2gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55", Scribner's Monthly, volume XVII, number 1 (November 1878) pages 55-59 (at page 59); modified slightly and reprinted in The Mountains of California http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_mountains_of_california/ (1894), chapter 10: A Wind-Storm in the Forests <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 401 -->
Context: We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings — many of them not so much.
Source: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays
In reference to the Alabama Council on Human Relations, an organization which was joined by King, whose church's meeting room was used to hold monthly meetings for the Montgomery chapter the council. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
1950s
Context: Although the Montgomery council never had a large membership, it played an important role. As the only truly interracial group in Montgomery, it served to keep the desperately needed channels of communication open between the races.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. In providing an avenue of communication, the council was fulfilling a necessary condition for better race relations in the South.
Book 1, Ch. 3 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Discourses on Livy (1517)
Source: The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)
Context: Only a few years ago there was a great awakening of the human mind. Men began to inquire by what right a crowned robber made them work for him? The man who asked this question was called a traitor. Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought? Such men were called infidels. The priest said, and the king said, where is this spirit of investigation to stop? They said then and they say now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space enough for every wing.
The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night
Source: Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.”
The Apple Cart (1928), Act I
1920s
“There is, in addition to a courage with which men die; a courage by which men must live.”
Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 22 : Artistic Attempts
“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”
“Men shout to avoid listening to one another.”
Source: Sweet Surrender
Source: Nights in Rodanthe
Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”
Source: The Whitechapel Conspiracy
Source: Silver Shadows
Source: Men Explain Things to Me
Source: The Virgin Suicides
“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”
Source: The Waste Land
“Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.”
Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Source: All the Pretty Horses
"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
“Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
Source: Watership Down
“I'm no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.”
Source: Bridget Jones's Diary
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Source: The Girls of Slender Means
Source: Plum Lovin'
“(Man in bar) Can you imagine a world without men? (Sylvia) No crime, and lots of happy, fat women.”
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 212-213
“Men often mistake killing and revenge for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice.”
Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 November 1990)
Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way
—H. L. Mencken O
“Women need a reason for having sex, men just need a place”
“thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.”
Source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 71
Context: The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
“Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.”
Source: Essays and Aphorisms
Remarks at Amherst College (26 October 1963) http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3379
1963, Speech at Amherst College
“Most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“Better to have one woman on your side than ten men.”
al'Lan Mandragoran
Variant: There is an old saying here in the Borderlands: "Better to have one woman on your side than ten men."
Source: The Great Hunt (15 November 1990)
Variant: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.
Source: Catch-22 (1961)
Context: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
