Quotes about men
page 5

“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

Personality

“O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!" - Cassio (Act II, Scene iii)”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

God

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

#25
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Source: Man and Superman

“Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Women, World, Time

“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

"Lady Lazarus"
Ariel (1965)
Variant: p>Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware.
Beware.Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.</p
Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

“Let me have men about me that are fat… Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Thinking

“I hold my peace, sir? no;
No, I will speak as liberal as the north;
Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Peace, Cry

“Sadly for my wedding plans, I learned that Nestor is a bardash. I envy the men who enjoy his favors. He has always treated me with friendship which I now value more than my old romantic feelings.”

Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound

Source: Bloodhound

Friendship, Feeling, Wedding, Learning

“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women… merely adored.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

Women

“Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

“The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One

Women, Age, Travel, Kiss

“Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Funny

“All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Evil

“To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

“Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Love, Women

“Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Life, Thinking

“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

World, Reading

“Is it not strange that sheep's guts could hail souls out of men's bodies?”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Soul

“I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual

Hope, Happiness

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false 1880s

Dreams, Hope, Spring, Light

“What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Women, Beauty

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”

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

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Sonnets (1609), XVIII
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Life

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Letter to Paul Cézanne (16 April 1860), as published in Paul Cézanne : Letters (1995) edited by John Rewald.

“You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: Tragedy of Coriolanus

Love, Hate, Cry, Dead

“Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Way

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

God, Fate

“Men don't respond to words. What they respond to is "no contact".”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“"I guess it's true what they say. There are no straight men in the trenches."
"That's atheists, jackass. There are no atheists in the trenches."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace and Simon, pg. 171
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Lincoln never said these words, but wrote and said some that are very similar to the above quote. As Lincoln's popularity within the Republican Party grew, he was invited to address members of his party throughout the nation. In September 1859 Lincoln gave several speeches to Ohio Republicans. The notes Lincoln used for his 1859 engagements state: "We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us — We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the constitution demands it — But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention — We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does require the prevention — We must prevent these things being done, by either congresses or courts — The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it —" Source: Abraham Lincoln [September 16-17, 1859<nowiki> http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d0189300))#I379</nowiki>] (Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio) http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal1/018/0189300/malpage.db&recNum=1 in "Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916." Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois. Lincoln transformed his prior quoted notes in the following words: "I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient Fugitive Slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." Source: Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, September 17, 1859 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/5/3253/3253-h/files/2657/2657-h/2657-h.htm#2H_4_0043; in "The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Five, Constitutional Edition", edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley and released as " The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Five, by Abraham Lincoln http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/5/3253/3253-h/files/2657/2657-h/2657-h.htm" (2009) by Project Gutenberg. Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Abraham Lincoln / Disputed 1850s

People

“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: The Impact of Science on Society

Women

“Men are jealous of every woman, even when they don’t have the slightest interest in her themselves.”

Jan Neruda (1834–1891) Czech poet, theater reviewer, publicist and writer

Source: Prague Tales

“I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.”

Alice Munro book Lives of Girls and Women

Source: Lives of Girls and Women

Women, Feeling

“I wonder, sometimes, whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Women, War, Peace, History

“God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. — And we — we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.”

Friedrich Nietzsche God is dead

Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
Sec. 108
Quotes about quotes: see also God is dead.
The Gay Science (1882)
Source: The Portable Nietzsche

God, Way, Dead

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'
Quite often men are fools.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of Light

Fools

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

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

Source: Pierre or the Ambiguities

Soul, Sea

“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11. Quoted in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (opening epigram).
Variant: Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
Source: Twilight of the Idols

Pleasure, Truth, Peace, Way

“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)

Women, Freedom

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

People, Age, Religion, Night

“The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

Mountain, Thinking

“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”

Oscar Wilde book A House of Pomegranates

Source: A House of Pomegranates

Soul

“You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
(Act II, Scene 2)”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Death, Fear

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! and now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)

Women, God, World, Strong

“The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

“Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Time

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon
Context: It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Memory, Forgetting

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, Children, World, Penalty

“Ye Hypocrites, are these your pranks
To murder men and gie God thanks
Desist for shame, proceed no further
God won't accept your thanks for murder.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

God

“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Freedom, Science

“Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Source: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Hell

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Tear, Light, Strong

“But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

“The only monsters I have ever known were men.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Time, Animals

“William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."
Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

Hope

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Love

“Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

God

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Birthday, For Men, Women, World

“If we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women…”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, World, Reality

“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 3, p. 58

Literature

“Where are our Men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their Country?”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Country

“Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Fools

“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Sect. 38
Source: Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Life, Freedom, Indifference

“Why is it that all cars are women?" he asked.

"Because they're fussy and demanding," answered Zee.

"Because if they were men, they'd sit around and complain instead of getting the job done," I told him.”

Patricia Briggs book Silver Borne

Source: Silver Borne

Women, Cars

“The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.”

Bertrand Russell book A History of Western Philosophy

Source: A History of Western Philosophy

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, World, Peace, Mountain

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Women, Sex, Boy

“The things men did or felt they had to do.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

Evil

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander Crummell

Truth, Age

“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“… the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)
Variant: Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

Way

“That is the corrosive paradox of gender feminism's misandrist stance: no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (1950) American author and philosopher

Source: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women

Women, War, Time

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 26

Women, Books, Universe, Animals

“Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

Disease

“And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pt. IV, st. 23 -- Wilde's epitaph
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

Tear

“We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side or the dark.”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) English author

“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.

(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.)”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Understanding

“Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Pleasure

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Silence

“This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

“Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Star

“I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Hate, Understanding, Evil

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Women, Thinking

“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Horse

“Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below, and the saints above, for love is heaven, and heaven is love.”

Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Canto III, stanza 2.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
Context: In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Love

“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”

Henry Fielding book The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Source: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Optimism
Poetry quotes, Poems of Pleasure (1900)
Context: I find a rapture linked with each despair,
Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.

Love, Hate, World, Light

“Educated men are so impressive!”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Education

“Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

William Shakespeare Richard II

Source: Richard II

Music, Time