Quotes about men
page 55

Michel Foucault photo
Tim Allen photo

“Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.”

Tim Allen (1953) American actor, voiceover artist and comedian

As quoted in Land Your Dream Job : High-Performance Techniques to Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Get Ahead (2007) by John Middleton, Ken Langdon, and Nikki Cartwright

Tadamichi Kuribayashi photo
Edward Thomson photo
John Aubrey photo
Aga Khan III photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Daniel Webster photo
Max Stirner photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Harold Wilson photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)

Hugo Diemer photo
Willa Cather photo
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey photo

“Men die but sorrow never dies.”

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905) writer

The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey (1975).

Gertrude Stein photo

“I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.”

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 69

“The sun is invisible in men, but visible in the world, yet both are of one and the same sun.”

Gerhard Dorn (1530–1584) alchemist, bibliophile, philosopher, physician, translator

Theatrum Chemicum Volume 1 Spec. phil.

Naomi Wolf photo
Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet photo
Josiah Quincy II photo

“Communist writers likewise maintain that the Judaic-Christian code of ethics is "class" morality. By this they mean that the Ten Commandments and the ethics of Christianity were created to protect private property and the property class. To show the lengths to which Communist writers have gone to defend this view we will mention several of their favorite interpretations of the Ten Commandments. They believe that "Honor thy Father and thy Mother" was created by the early Hebrews to emphasize to their children the fact that they were the private property of their parents. "Thou shalt not kill" was attributed to the belief of the dominant class that their bodies were private property and therefore they should be protected along with other property rights. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" were said to have been created to implement the idea that a husband was the master of the home and the wife was strictly private property belonging to him. This last line of reasoning led to some catastrophic consequences when the Communists came into power in Russia. In their anxiety to make women "equal with men" and prevent them from becoming private property, they degraded womankind to the lowest and most primitive level. Some Communist leaders advocated complete libertinism and promiscuity to replace marriage and the family.”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Robin Morgan photo
Emma Goldman photo

“Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Of Men and Women (1941), Ch. 8

Christopher Hitchens photo
Bruce Fairchild Barton photo
Herman Melville photo
Thomas Szasz photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“There is a saying by Gustave Dore which I have always admired: "J'ai la patience d'un boeuf." [I have the patience of an ox]. I find in it a certain goodness, a certain resolute honesty, more, it has a deep meaning that saying, it is the word of a real artist. When one thinks of the men from whose heart such a saying sprang, all the arguments one too often hears of art dealers about "natural gifts", seem to become a terrible raven's croaking.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 336) p. 34
1880s, 1883

Poul Anderson photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“But so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.”

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

Bianca Among the Nightingales http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3035&poem=127031, st. 12 (1862).

Pierre-Simon Laplace photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“I am not as these are, the poet saith
In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
At bay, where never pencil comes nor pem”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

from Not As These in The House of Life 1870 kindle ebook ASIN B0082R81E8

Henry David Thoreau photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“The gretest clerkes ben not the wisest men.”

The Reeve's Tale, l. 4051
The Canterbury Tales

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter VII, Things Become More Serious, Section VIII, p. 130

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.”

Adieu les monstres! Adieu les saints! Adieu l'orgueil! Il n'y a que des hommes.
Act 10, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Yoshida Shoin photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo

“Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st," appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XI

Thomas Carlyle photo
Thomas Middleton photo

“That disease
Of which all old men sicken,—avarice.”

The Roaring Girl (co-written with Thomas Dekker, 1611), Act i. Sc. 1. Compare: "So for a good old gentlemanly vice,/I think I must take up with avarice", Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto i. stanza 216.

Robert Boyle photo
Charles Cooley photo
Camille Paglia photo
Richard Walther Darré photo
John Maynard Keynes photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Tanith Lee photo

“Cicero bent Greek ideas to his vision of the idealized Roman Republic, and his understanding of the mores—the morality and social attachments—of the gentlemanly statesmen who would hold power in a just republic. Readers familiar with Machiavelli’s Prince will hear curious echoes of that work in Cicero’s advice; curious because the pieties of Cicero’s advice to the would-be statesman were satirized by Machiavelli sixteen hundred years later. If his philosophy was Greek and eclectic, Cicero owed his constitutional theory to Polybius; he was born soon after Polybius died, and read his history. And Cicero greatly admired Polybius’s friend and employer Scipio the Younger. There are obvious differences of tone. Polybius celebrated Rome’s achievement of equipoise, while Cicero lamented the ruin of the republic. Cicero’s account of republican politics veers between a “constitutional” emphasis on the way that good institutions allow a state to function by recruiting men of good but not superhuman character, and a “heroic” emphasis on the role of truly great men in reconstituting the state when it has come to ruin. Cicero’s vanity was so notorious that everyone knew he had himself in mind as this hero—had he not saved the republic before when he quelled the conspiracy of Catiline?”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 4 : Roman Insights: Polybius and Cicero

Hiroo Onoda photo

“Men should never give up. I never do. I would hate to lose.”

Hiroo Onoda (1922–2014) Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer

Judit Kawaguchi, "Words to Live By: Hiroo Onoda"

Clement of Alexandria photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Warren Farrell photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo

“14:06> …Of course I made it quite clear to the women that I thought that that the way that they had been abused was terrible and completely unjustifiable. However, I thought that it was very important that they should understand their own complicity in it; so that, for example, they understood that the way they chose men, and their refusal to see signs (which they were capable of seeing) resulted in their misery… <14:40> To give you a concrete example, I would say to them, ‘This man of yours, who’s very nasty to you, and drags you across the floor, and puts your head through the window, and sometimes even hangs you out of the window by your ankles: How long do you think it would take me to realise he was no good, as he came through the door? Would it take me a second, or half a second, or an eighth of a second, or would I not notice that there was anything wrong with him at all?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, an eighth of a second, you’d know immediately.’ And I would say to them, ‘Well, if you know that I would know immediately, then you knew immediately as well.’ It’s a logical consequence, really. And they would accept that. ‘And yet, you chose to associate with him, knowing full well that he was no good; and I tell you this, because it’s very necessary you should understand your own part in the predicament you now find yourself in, because if you don’t understand it, or don’t think about it, you’re just going to repeat it.’ which is of course, a very, very common pattern.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Daniels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_(psychiatrist) on helping victims of abuse understand how they can help to break the cycle.
CBC Ideas Interview (podcast) (September 25, 2006)

John Buchan photo
William McKinley photo

“that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Attributed by James F. Rusling "Interview with President McKinley" The Christian Advocate (22 January 1903), as remarks from a meeting with clergymen on 21 November 1899. The overtly religious part is disputed in Lewis Gould (1980) The Presidency of William McKinley.

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“That which is most excellent, and is most to be desired by all happy, honest and healthy-minded men, is dignified leisure.”
Id quod est praestantissimum, maximeque optabile omnibus sanis et bonis et beatis, cum dignitate otium.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Pro Publio Sestio; Chapter XLV

Sean O`Casey photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“strong>The good particular men may do separately, in relieving the sick, is small, compared with what they may do collectively.</strong”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Appeal for the Hospital The Pennsylvania Gazette (8 August 1751).
1760s

Frances Kellor photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.”

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

Speech in New York City http://books.google.com/books?id=Bc7iAAAAMAAJ&q=&quot;Generally+young+men+are+regarded+as+radicals+This+is+a+popular+misconception+The+most+conservative+persons+I+ever+met+are+college+undergraduates&quot;+&quot;the+radicals&quot;+&quot;are+the+men+past+middle+life&quot;, (19 Nov 1905), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson 16:228
1900s

“Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Ayn Rand photo
Elizabeth Gaskell photo
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke photo

“The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation (1753)

Ann Coulter photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo
Gerald Ford photo

“For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Speech to the International Eucharistic Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as quoted in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (13 August 1976)
1970s

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“…he thinks that peace is, of all things, the best, and that war is, of all things, the worst. Now, Sir, I happen to be of opinion that there are things for which peace may be advantageously sacrificed, and that there are calamities which a nation may endure which are far worse than war. This has been the opinion of men in all ages whose conduct has been admired by their contemporaries, and has obtained for them the approbation of posterity. The hon. Member, however, reduces everything to the question of pounds, shillings, and pence, and I verily believe that if this country were threatened with an immediate invasion likely to end in its conquest, the hon. Member would sit down, take a piece of paper, and would put on one side of the account the contributions which his Government would require from him for the defence of the liberty and independence of the country, and he would put on the other the probable contributions which the general of the invading army might levy upon Manchester, and if he found that, on balancing the account, it would be cheaper to be conquered than to be laid under contribution for defence, he would give his vote against going to war for the liberties and independence of the country, rather than bear his share in the expenditure which it would entail.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons on the debate on war with Russia (31 March 1854).
1850s

Gertrude Breslau Hunt photo
François Arago photo
Girolamo Cardano photo
Van Morrison photo

“Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Take It Where You Find It
Song lyrics, Wavelength (1978)

“Economics deals with the behavior of commodities rather than with the behavior of men.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, New York: Truman Talley Books, E.P. Dutton, 1986, p. 21.
1980s

Rudyard Kipling photo

“When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took—the same as me!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

When 'Omer Smote 'is Bloomin' Lyre http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/omersmote.html, Stanza 1 (1894).
Other works

John Gay photo

“O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed,
By keeping men off, you keep them on.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Act I, sc. viii, air 9
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Herman Kahn photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“I began to reconcile myself to my forlorn condition, but still I was not what I wished to be: the worst of all was, I had no friend; not a human being that understood me. I wrote daily to my friend Leisewitz; he resided in Hanover, and was just as unhappy as myself, except that he had some friends, and plenty of money. In this respect I was differently situated, and although in want of money to buy books, I was determined not to be any expense to my father. Some watches, snuff-boxes, and rings, presents I had received in Gottingen, soon found their way to the hands of Jews at half price. I was even, against my will, driven to the necessity of accepting small fees from mechanics and peasants. This cut me to the heart; but I could not help myself. The following circumstance, however, overcame me more than all: My father was a man of great knowledge and experience, but, like all old men, he remained faithful to the old method of practice. I visited many of his patients, and without telling me exactly what mode of treatment I was to pursue, he only observed, "You will act so and sohowever, I saw the patients had confidence in my father only, and not in me; they wished me to be his tool, and I therefore followed his mode of practice, and thus lost several of his patients, who could have been saved had I followed my own method.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Edward Heath photo

“This was a secret meeting on a secret tour which nobody is supposed to know about. It means that there are men, and perhaps women, in this country walking around with eggs in their pockets, just on the off-chance of seeing the Prime Minister.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Remarks to the press after Harold Wilson was hit by eggs thrown by demonstrators on two successive days (1 June 1970), quoted in Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p. 305.
Leader of the Opposition

Whittaker Chambers photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Errico Malatesta photo

“What matters most is that people, all men, lose their sheepish instincts and habits that the millennial slavery inspired them, and they learn to think and act freely.”

Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) Italian anarchist

Ciò che più importa è che il popolo, gli uomini tutti, perdano gli istinti e le abitudini pecorili che la millenaria schiavitù ha loro ispirato ed apprendano a pensare ed agire liberamente.
Scritti: "Pensiero e volontá," rivista quindicinale di studi sociali e di coltura generale (Roma, 1924-1926) e ultimi scritti (1926-1932) [Writings: "Thought and Will," fortnightly magazine of social studies and culture general (Rome, 1924-1926) and later writings (1926-1932)], Vol. 3, p. 317; this is also quoted in the message on an Anarchist white stone monument in Pozzuoli, Italy, with simply "Gli anarchici" [The anarchists] appended to the statement.

Arnobius photo
Henry Codman Potter photo