Quotes about men
page 36

Joseph Gurney Cannon photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“There is that glorious Epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Holmes attributed the remark "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris" to "one of the wittiest of men". Later writers have attributed the saying to friend and fellow Saturday Club member Thomas Gold Appleton. In 1859, Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a member of that club, recorded in one of his journals, "T. Appleton says, that he thinks all Bostonians, when they die, if they are good, go to Paris." Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (1982), p. 486. Neither sentence has been found in the published writings of Appleton, but the remark may have been made in the presence of Holmes and Emerson. Oscar Wilde used the Holmes version in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), p. 75 (Complete Works, vol. 4, 1923), and A Woman of No Importance (1893), p. 180 (Complete Works, vol. 7, 1923).
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

John F. Kennedy photo

“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable”

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

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Frank Chodorov photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“Once emotions are set in motion, and men pitted against men along these unspoken lines, you will have the kind of warfare that will split the nation from top to bottom and undo Malaysia. Everybody knows it. I don't have to say it. It is the unspoken word!”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://www.jeffooi.com/archives/2005/11/i_went_into_act.php
1960s

Hesiod photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Bell Hooks photo

“While I expected serious, rigorous evaluation of my work, I was totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean we have a basis for communication, that our political commitments should lead us to talk and struggle together. Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation. Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to the book from black women who felt it compelled them to either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist movement, I might have become terribly disheartened and disillusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men this book was not written in isolation. … Such encouragement renews my commitment to feminist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a work is received among feminist activists but by the extent to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist struggle inside.”

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Thomas Hobbes photo
Newton Lee photo
Ossip Zadkine photo
Philo photo
William Jones photo

“What constitutes a state?
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.
And sovereign law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

Ode in Imitation of Alcæus, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Neither walls, theatres, porches, nor senseless equipage, make states, but men who are able to rely upon themselves", Aristides, Orations (Jebb's edition), vol. i. (trans. by A. W. Austin); By Themistocles alone, or with very few others, does this saying appear to be approved, which, though Alcæus formerly had produced, many afterwards claimed: "Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans, make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls."—Ibid. vol. ii.

Jesse Helms photo

“Look carefully into the faces of the people participating. What you will see, for the most part, are dirty, unshaven, often crude young men and stringy-haired awkward young women who cannot attract attention any other way.”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

(1968) The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/us/politics/00helms.html (2008) in reference to Viet Nam war protestors.
1960s

Anthony Trollope photo
Henry Adams photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.”

"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Anacharsis, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Anthony Burgess photo
William Osler photo

“There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

As quoted in Women in Medicine (1968) by Carol Lopate and Josiah Macy, Jr., p. 178.

Martin Harris photo

“BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY DAVID WHITMER MARTIN HARRIS”

Martin Harris (1783–1875) Book of Mormon witness

Book of Mormon, 1830 Edition, p. 585 (1830)

Frederick Douglass photo
Susan Cooper photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“There are many kinds of gods. Therefore there are many kinds of men.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 3
Do What You Will (1928)

Bayard Taylor photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
John Rupert Firth photo

“The phonetic animal par excellence is man. All men are born with an infinite capacity for making noises and using them.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

1964, p. 141; Chapter 1; Chapter 1: The Origin of Speech
Speech, 1930

Maimónides photo
Hesiod photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

“He who is worthy of God is also a god among men.”

Quintus Sextius Roman philosopher

Sentences of Sextus

Kurt Student photo
Erwin Schrödinger photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Ernest J. Gaines photo

“King is probably one of three men of this century that I'll call heroic. A fantastic man as far as I'm concerned, for all that he did.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

In an interview with Patricia Rickels, as quoted in John Lowe (1995) Conversations with Ernest Gaines, University Press of Mississippi, p. 131

Muhammad of Ghor photo
Everett Dean Martin photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“The liberal program aims to dissolve 'the constitution of man' in the service of sexual sameness. It is predicated on the imbecilic belief that biology is incidental, and that men and women are essentially interchangeable.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Are Liberal Pervs Sexually Obsessed With Refugees?" https://constitution.com/are-liberal-pervs-sexually-obsessed-with-refugees/, Constitution.com, April 27, 2018.
2010s, 2018

François Mignet photo
James Longstreet photo

“Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

James Longstreet (1821–1904) Confederate Army general

The New York Times http://www.granthomepage.com/intlongstreet.htm (24 July 1885)

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre photo

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Stanley Baldwin photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Henry Fielding photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Helping men express feelings starts with understanding why men don’t express them.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Coventry Patmore photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Ralph Chaplin photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Men become utilitarian out of fear of the alternative—the chaos of tangled or tepid desires, of rootlessness and boredom.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 148

Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo
Graham Greene photo
William Tyndale photo

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and yet had no love I were even as the sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal.”

William Tyndale (1494–1536) Bible translator and agitator from England

1 Corinthians 13:1.
Tyndale's translations

Thomas Kuhn photo
Antisthenes photo

“It is better to fight with a few good men against all the wicked, than with many wicked men against a few good men.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

William Hazlitt photo

“Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 416
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Ann Coulter photo

“The subject of men and women is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Try to Behave Myself: Peg Bracken's Etiquette Book (1966)

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Hesiod photo
African Spir photo

“We can, following the exemple of Kant, consider the moral development and improvement of men, as the supreme goal of human evolution.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 61.

William Stanley Jevons photo
John Adams photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
John Steinbeck photo

“It is so easy a thing to give—only great men have the courage and courtesy and, yes, the generosity to receive.”

Friend Ed to Joe Saul in Act Three, Scene I: The Sea
Burning Bright (1950)

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Isaac Barrow photo

“There are earth-shattering events going on around you, Lydia. men are scheming, debating, plotting, intriguing for the future of our country but, despite all their talk, it is the little children who are really creating the future. While these big men spend hours talking and arguing, you and your friends are busy building a nation. I don't exaggerate: all societies must be based on justice, love, trust and sharing. Though only 3, you are already practising them in your playgroup. Left to yourselves, you black and white children are actually doing that, while the politicians nervously insert clauses into bills to guard their investments and vested interest, or to protect people from people. You don't need to be protected from children of other races, because to you they are simply your friends, and you accept them totally for what they are. Your playgroup is based on trust. That is a precious commodity. I hope you never lose it. When men in Namibia act on that lesson we too, like you, can begin to build a nation.”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

"An Open Letter to Lydia Morrow" Pro Veritate, V.15, No. 4 (September 1976) http://disa.nu.ac.za/articledisplaypage.asp?filename=PVSep76&articletitle=An+open+letter+to+Lydia+Morrow+from+Colin+Winter%2C+Bishop+of+Damaraland+in+exile+++++++++&searchtype=browse. Pro Veritate http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourpvexpand.htm was a Christian monthly journal published in South Africa from 1962 to 1977. Lydia Morrow was the small daughter of Winter's friends and associates, Edward and Laureen Morrow.

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Herman Melville photo

“Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Supplement
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

Clifford D. Simak photo
Willa Cather photo
David Hume photo
Ayn Rand photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. II, ch. 8.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

John Napier photo

“Here then (belove reader) thou hast this work devided into two treatises, the first is the said introduction and reasoning, for investigation of the true sense of every cheife Theological tearme and date contained in the Revelation, whereby, not onely is it opened, explained and interpreted, but also that same explanation and interpretation is proved, confirmed and demonstrated, by evidente proofe and coherence of scriptures, agreeable with the event of histories. The seconde is, the principall treatise, in which the whole Apocalyps, Chapter by chapter, Verse by verse, and Sentence by sentence, is both Paraphrastically expounded and Historically applyed. …And because this whole work of Revelation concerneth most the discoverie of the Antichristian and Papisticall kingdome, I have therefore (for removing of all suspition) in al histories and prophane matters, taken my authorities and cited my places either out of Ethnick auctors, or then papistical writers, whose testimonies by no reason can be refuted against themselves. But in matters of divinitie, doctrine & interpretation of mysteries (leaving all opinions of men) I take me onely to the interpretation and discoverie thereof, by coherence of scripture, and godly reasons following thereupon; which also not only no Papist, but even no Christian may justly refuse. And forasmuch as our scripturs herein are of two fortes, the one our ordinary text, the other extraordinary citations; In our ordinary text, I follow not altogether the vulgar English translation, but the best learned in the Greek tong, so that (for satisfying the Papists) I differ nothing from their vulgar text of S. Jerome, as they cal it, except is such places, where I prove by good reasons, that hee differeth from the Original Greek. In the extraordinary texts of other scriptures cited by me, I followe ever Jeromes latine translation, where any controverse stands betwixt us and the Papists, and that moveth me in divers places to insert his very latine text, for their cause, with the just English thereof, for supply of the unlearned.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593)

Bruce Fairchild Barton photo

“What a curious phenomenon it is, that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world, who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American author, politician and advertising executive

"The Fine, Rare Habit of Learning to Do Without", Every Week magazine, as quoted in http://adventistdigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/adl:352018/datastream/PDF/view The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol 95, No 31, 1 August 1918, pp. 18-19

John Lancaster Spalding photo

“They who admire and reverence noble and heroic men are akin to them.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 145

Robert Olmstead photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

“The missionaries should be men of apostolic zeal, patience, endurance, willing to be all things to all men. May the Lord raise up suitable instruments, and fit me for this work.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Two: Over the Treaty Wall. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 23).

Horace Walpole photo
James, son of Zebedee photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Samuel Adams photo
Will Cuppy photo

“All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Scott Lynch photo