Quotes about men
page 35

William Hazlitt photo

“In the interests of the ideal of maximum output, [our society] judges men by their fitness for jobs, not jobs by their fitness for men.”

John Passmore (1914–2004) Australian philosopher

Source: The Perfectibility of Man (1971), p. 280.

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“I don't underrate the value of military knowledge, but if men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

As quoted in A History of Militarism: Romance and Realities of a Profession (1937) by Alfred Vagts, p. 27.

D.H. Lawrence photo

“Men and women aren't really dogs: they only look like it and behave like it. Somewhere inside there is a great chagrin and a gnawing discontent.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)

Pu Songling photo

“How foolish men are, to see nothing but beauty in what is clearly evil! […] Heaven's Way has its inexorable justice, but some mortals remain foolish and never see the light!”

Pu Songling (1640–1715) Chinese writer

"The Painted Skin" from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740), as translated by John Minford in Strange tales from a Chinese studio (2006), p. 521

Thomas Noon Talfourd photo
Bernard Mandeville photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Taliesin photo

“The creeds are not changing as rapidly as the beliefs of the people, nor as rapidly as most men of progressive mind desire”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Defence at his Heresy Trial

Frederick Douglass photo

“Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mister Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

William Morley Punshon photo
Tawakkol Karman photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable…The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other…I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

Brigham Young photo
James Thurber photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
George Horne photo

“Bishop Jeremy Taylor is clear, that men will find it impossible to do anything greatly good, unless they cut off all superfluous company and visits.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Olla Podrida, No. 9.
Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, 1880

Robert Graves photo
GG Allin photo

“GG Allin: I might go and kick somebody in the head, I might grab a girl and force her to perform oral sex with me. I've had sex on stage with men, women and animals and everything in between.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Richard Steele photo

“The finest woman in nature should not detain me an hour from you; but you must sometimes suffer the rivalship of the wisest men.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

17 September 1712
Letters to His Wife (1707-1712)

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.”

Les jeunes filles se créent souvent de nobles, de ravissantes images, des figures tout idéales, et se forgent des idées chimériques sur les hommes, sur les sentiments, sur le monde; puis elles attribuent innocemment à un caractère les perfections qu'elles ont rêvées, et s'y confient.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. I: Early Mistakes.

Betty Friedan photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die.”

"The Arimaspin Legacy" (1987), first appeared as a Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005)
Fiction

Richard Nixon photo
Charles Taze Russell photo
Paulo Freire photo
Enoch Powell photo
Henry Adams photo
Michael Shea photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Once again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.”
rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.

Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 251-253; (Amphitryon)
Alternate translation: Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue. (translator unknown)
Alternate translation: Might makes right. (translator unknown).
Tragedies

André Gide photo

“True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” pp. 311-312
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Stanley Baldwin photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Warren Farrell photo
Isaac Watts photo

“Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Stanza 2.
1710s, Psalm 98 "Joy to the World!" (1719)

Thomas Bradwardine photo

“Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 14 "The Toast is Victory!"

Rebecca West photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Radio and television report to the American people on civil rights (11 June 1963)]
1963, Civil Rights Address

Fisher Ames photo
George MacDonald photo
Warren Farrell photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Donald J. Trump photo
William McFee photo
Robert Jordan photo

“Men believe the worst easily, and women believe it hides something still darker.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Two Rivers saying
(15 October 1994)

Immanuel Kant photo
Simon Munnery photo

“Why do men die before their wives? Could it be because they want to?”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), Episode One

Piero Manzoni photo
John Muir photo

“In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"From Fort Independence to Yosemite", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 6 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated September 1875, published 15 September 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 113
1870s

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Samuel Butler photo
Jean Piaget photo

“The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

As quoted in Education for Democracy, Proceedings from the Cambridge School Conference on Progressive Education (1988) edited by Kathe Jervis and Arthur Tobier

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

Francis Bacon photo
Subhash Kak photo

“Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

Recursionism and Reality, 2002.
Miscellaneous

Richard Cobden photo
Charles Churchill (satirist) photo

“Amongst the sons of men how few are known
Who dare be just to merit not their own?”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

Epistle to William Hogarth (July 1763)

Warren Farrell photo

“Just as women needed the help of the law to enter the workplace in the 20th century, men will need the help of the law to love their children in the 21st century.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 122.

Andrea Dworkin photo
Aristide Maillol photo

“The first thing that strikes [one] in Cézanne is not apples, but balance of tones. With elements drawn from nature, what did [Cézanne] attempt? To create, to arouse powerful feeling, to awaken in the hearts of men that which is eternal in men.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

in a writing of Maillol, quoted in 'Aristide Maillol', ed. Andrew C. Ritchie, Albright Art Gallery N Y 1945, p. 31; as quoted by Angelo Carnafa, in 'A sculpture of interior Solitude', Associated University Presse, 1999, p. 168

Alexander Hamilton photo

“Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Letter (16 April 1802)

Aristophanés photo
Ray Bradbury photo
William Hazlitt photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Orson Welles photo

“Men created civilization only to impress their girl friends”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Attributed to Welles in Ebony magazine (August 1977) https://books.google.com/books?id=08sDAAAAMBAJ&q=%22men+created+civilization%22#v=snippet&q=%22men%20created%20civilization%22&f=false.
Disputed quotes

Richard J. Evans photo
Dylan Moran photo

“Men look at breasts the way women look at babies. 'Aw, isn't that lovely.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom photo

“Italy: "…they are indeed a repulsive nation these dagoes, both the men and the women & I'm just longing to quit them for good & all!!!"”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

18 September 1918
Around the World with the Prince of Wales

David Lloyd George photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Cao Xueqin photo
Xenophanes photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we affirmed through law that men equal under God are also equal when they seek a job, when they go to get a meal in a restaurant, or when they seek lodging for the night in any State in the Union.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks on the Civil Rights Act (1968)

John Gay photo

“Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable, The Painter who pleased Nobody and Everybody
Fables (1727)

Cormac McCarthy photo
David Hume photo

“That original intelligence, say the MAGIANS, who is the first principle of all things, discovers himself immediately to the mind and understanding alone; but has placed the sun as his image in the visible universe; and when that bright luminary diffuses its beams over the earth and the firmament, it is a faint copy of the glory which resides in the higher heavens. If you would escape the displeasure of this divine being, you must be careful never to set your bare foot upon the ground, nor spit into a fire, nor throw any water upon it, even though it were consuming a whole city. Who can express the perfections of the Almighty? say the Mahometans. Even the noblest of his works, if compared to him, are but dust and rubbish. How much more must human conception fall short of his infinite perfections? His smile and favour renders men for ever happy; and to obtain it for your children, the best method is to cut off from them, while infants, a little bit of skin, about half the breadth of a farthing. Take two bits of cloth, say the Roman catholics, about an inch or an inch and a half square, join them by the corners with two strings or pieces of tape about sixteen inches long, throw this over your head, and make one of the bits of cloth lie upon your breast, and the other upon your back, keeping them next your skin: There is not a better secret for recommending yourself to that infinite Being, who exists from eternity to eternity.”

Part VII - Confirmation of this doctrine
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Ray Comfort photo

“Darwin believed that women were not as competent as men, and less intelligent than men, but they were better than a dog.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Pope John Paul II photo

“Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Letter to artists, 4 April 1999
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists_en.html

Honoré de Balzac photo

“He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia. — Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418), book II, ch. VI, paragraph 2.
Misattributed

Poul Anderson photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Jonathan Swift photo
Frederick Douglass photo
John Heywood photo

“The greatest Clerkes be not the wisest men.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)