Quotes about men
page 58

Laurence Sterne photo
Charles Hodge photo

“The Spirit never makes men the instruments of converting others until they feel that they cannot do it themselves; that their skill in argument, in persuasion, in management, avails nothing.”

Charles Hodge (1797–1878) American Presbyterian theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 122.

Bell Hooks photo
African Spir photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Men are always far more shocked by the vulgarities of women then women are by the vulgarities of men. It is one of the few monopolies which men consider should be theirs after the emancipation of women.”

Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992) English novelist, essayist, critic, memoirist and biographer

Drummond, William (pseud. Arthur Calder-Marshall). Victim. London: Corgi. 1961.

Tadamichi Kuribayashi photo
John Adams photo
Naomi Wolf photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Euripidés photo

“Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
Misattributed

Anna Akhmatova photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“What the Divine wants is for man to embody Him here, in the individual and in the collectivity… to realise God in life. The old system of yoga could not harmonise or unify Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as Maya or a transient play of God. The result has been a diminution of life-power and the decline of India. The Gita says, utsideyur ime loka na kuryam karma cedaham ["These peoples would crumble to pieces if I did not do actions," 3.24]. Truly 'these peoples' of India have gone to ruin. What kind of spiritual perfection is it if a few Sannyasins, Bairagis and Saddhus attain realisation and liberation, if a few Bhaktas dance in a frenzy of love, god-intoxication and Ananda, and an entire race, devoid of life, devoid of intelligence, sinks to the depths of extreme tamas?… But now the time has come to take hold of the substance instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works…. I believe that the main cause of India's weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think… incapacity of thought or 'thought-phobia'…. The mediaeval period was a night, a time of victory for the man of ignorance; the modern world is a time of victory for the man of knowledge. It is the one who can fathom and learn the truth of the world by thinking more, searching more, labouring more, who will gain more Shakti. Look at Europe, and you will see two things: a wide limitless sea of thought and the play of a huge and rapid, yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe lies there. It is by virtue of this Shakti that she has been able to swallow the world, like our Tapaswins of old, whose might held even the gods of the universe in awe, suspense and subjection. People say that Europe is rushing into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions, all these upsettings are the initial stages of a new creation….. We, however, are not worshippers of Shakti; we are worshippers of the easy way…. Our civilisation has become ossified, our Dharma a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of intoxication. So long as this state of things lasts, any permanent resurgence of India is impossible…. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and so the Shakti has abandoned us…. You say what is needed is emotional excitement, to fill the country with enthusiasm. We did all that in the political field during the Swadeshi period; but all we did now lies in the dust…. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement, feeling and mental enthusiasm the base. I want to make a vast and heroic equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the activities of the being, of the adhar [vessel] based on that equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable Shakti; over that ocean of Shakti I want the vast radiation of the sun of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want tens of thousands of disciples; it will be enough if I can get as instruments of God a hundred complete men free from petty egoism. I have no faith in the customary trade of guru. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awakened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is such men who will raise this country.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

April, 1920, Letter to Barin Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's brother, Translated from Bengali
India's Rebirth

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Franz Marc photo

“In war we are all equal, but among a thousand good men, a bullet hit an irreplaceable one... We painters know well that with the loss of his harmony [ of August Macke ], the color in German art will become many shades paler..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote of Franz Marc, in exhibition-text 'Die Blaue Reiter', Gemeentemuseum the Hague, Netherlands 2010
c. 1914/15, on the death of his close friend August Macke, who fell in the first months of World War 1.
1915 - 1916

Nathan Bedford Forrest photo
Anne Brontë photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But… things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 56-57

Thomas Carlyle photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Opening to Ch 14. Translation from: What Is Art and Essays on Art (Oxford University Press, 1930, trans. Aylmer Maude)
As quoted by physicist Joseph Ford in Chaotic Dynamics and Fractals (1985) edited by Michael Fielding Barnsley and Stephen G. Demko
What is Art? (1897)
Variant: I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Friedrich Kellner photo

“I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book”

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

Defence at his Heresy Trial

Clarence Darrow photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Of course, like all young men, I tried to be as unhappy as I could — a kind of Hamlet and Raskolnikov rolled into one.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

Báb photo

“The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation. That which is intended by ‘Revelation of God’ is the Tree of divine Truth that betokeneth none but Him, and it is this divine Tree that hath raised and will raise up Messengers, and hath revealed and will ever reveal Scriptures. From eternity unto eternity this Tree of divine Truth hath served and will ever serve as the throne of the revelation and concealment of God among His creatures, and in every age is made manifest through whomsoever He pleaseth. At the time of the revelation of the Qur’án He asserted His transcendent power through the advent of Muḥammad, and on the occasion of the revelation of the Bayán He demonstrated His sovereign might through the appearance of the Point of the Bayán, and when He Whom God shall make manifest will shine forth, it will be through Him that He will vindicate the truth of His Faith, as He pleaseth, with whatsoever He pleaseth and for whatsoever He pleaseth. He is with all things, yet nothing is with Him. He is not within a thing nor above it nor beside it. Any reference to His being established upon the throne implieth that the Exponent of His Revelation is established upon the seat of transcendent authority…
He hath everlastingly existed and will everlastingly continue to exist. He hath been and will ever remain inscrutable unto all men, inasmuch as all else besides Him have been and shall ever be created through the potency of His command. He is exalted above every mention or praise and is sanctified beyond every word of commendation or every comparison. No created thing comprehendeth Him, while He in truth comprehendeth all things. Even when it is said ‘no created thing comprehendeth Him’, this refers to the Mirror of His Revelation, that is Him Whom God shall make manifest. Indeed too high and exalted is He for anyone to allude unto Him.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 8
The Persian Bayán

Halldór Laxness photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Ken Ham photo
Émile Durkheim photo

“Opinion is steadily inclining towards making the division of labor an imperative rule of conduct, to present it as a duty. Those who shun it are not punished precise penalty fixed by law, it is true; but they are blamed. The time has passed when the perfect man was he who appeared interested in everything without attaching himself exclusively to anything, capable of tasting and understanding everything finding means to unite and condense in himself all that was most exquisite in civilization. … We want activity, instead of spreading itself over a large area, to concentrate and gain in intensity what it loses in extent. We distrust those excessively mobile talents that lend themselves equally to all uses, refusing to choose a special role and keep to it. We disapprove of those men whose unique care is to organize and develop all their faculties, but without making any definite use of them, and without sacrificing any of them, as if each man were sufficient unto himself, and constituted an independent world. It seems to us that this state of detachment and indetermination has something anti-social about it. The praiseworthy man of former times is only a dilettante to us, and we refuse to give dilettantism any moral value; we rather see perfection in the man seeking, not to be complete, but to produce; who has a restricted task, and devotes himself to it; who does his duty, accomplishes his work. “To perfect oneself,” said Secrétan, “is to learn one's role, to become capable of fulfilling one's function... The measure of our perfection is no longer found in our complacence with ourselves, in the applause of a crowd, or in the approving smile of an affected dilettantism, but in the sum of given services and in our capacity to give more.””

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

[Le principe de la morale, p. 189] … We no longer think that the exclusive duty of man is to realize in himself the qualities of man in general; but we believe he must have those pertaining to his function. … The categorical imperative of the moral conscience is assuming the following form: Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.
Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), pp. 42-43.

Báb photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“I frankly doubt, moreover, whether the fiercely proud men who adopted our Fourth Amendment would have allowed themselves to be subjected, on mere suspicion of being armed and dangerous, to such indignity.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=508&invol=366 (1993) (concurring).
1990s

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
James Anthony Froude photo
Jean Meslier photo
Henry Adams photo
André Maurois photo
Euripidés photo
Camille Paglia photo
Camille Paglia photo
Annie Besant photo
Charles Lindbergh photo

“Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

After visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, as quoted in The New York Times (20 April 1980) http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/lindbergh-jews.html

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.”

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

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

Michael Bloomberg photo

“Government by three men in a room has turned New York State into a national symbol of governmental dysfunction. Enough is enough!”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/searchlight/20070117/203/2080
Election Reform

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.”

Act 11, sc. 2
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”

Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Jean de La Bruyère photo

“It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well, nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.”

18
Variant translation:
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: being A Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 560
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

“The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

On the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in The Nation (31 August 1927)

Al-Mutanabbi photo
Sydney Smith photo
Philip Schaff photo

“Luther's Qualifications. Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther's version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Rudyard Kipling photo

“God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all.”

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

Sussex http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/sussex.html, Stanza 1 (1902).
Other works

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus photo

“One stroke of sword and all the world is yours.
Make plain to all men that the crowds who decked
Pompeius' hundred pageants scarce were fit
For one poor triumph.”

Et primo ferri motu prosternite mundum; sitque palam, quas tot duxit Pompeius in urbem curribus, unius gentes non esse triumphi.

Book VII, line 278 (tr. E. Ridley).
Pharsalia

Michael Drayton photo

“Oh, when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?”

Michael Drayton (1563–1631) English poet

Source: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627), Lines 117-120.

Anthony Burgess photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Hannah More photo

“In men this blunder still you find,—
All think their little set mankind.”

Hannah More (1745–1833) English religious writer and philanthropist

Florio, Part i.

Brian Clevinger photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Men in authority are now a threatened minority.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Bullied 'Jail Bus' Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not A Hero,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=657 WorldNetDaily.com, June 29, 2012.
2010s, 2012

Samuel R. Delany photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Theodor Mommsen photo
Monier Monier-Williams photo
Martin Niemöller photo
Francis Bacon photo
Rick Santorum photo

“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob! There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor and trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college: he wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

speech at Americans for Prosperity Tea Party event at Troy, Michigan,
referring to President Obama saying, in his first address to Congress in , "Tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be a community college or a four-year school, vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma."
2012-02-25
Rick Santorum: Obama Is ‘A Snob’ For Wanting Everyone To Go To College
James
Crugnale
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rick-santorum-obama-is-a-snob-for-wanting-everyone-to-go-to-college/

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“Of all the floures in the mede,
Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our toun.”

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English poet

Prologue of the Legend of Good Women, line 41
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There're so many young guys, you know — young Americans and, yes, young men everywhere — a whole generation of people younger than me who have grown up feeling inadequate as men because they haven't been able to fight in a war and find out whether they are brave or not. Because it is in an effort to prove this bravery that we fight — in wars or in bars — whereas if a man were truly brave he wouldn't have to be always proving it to himself. So therefore I am forced to consider bravery suspect, and ridiculous, and dangerous. Because if there are enough young men like that who feel strongly enough about it, they can almost bring on a war, even when none of them want it, and are in fact struggling against having one. (And as far as modern war is concerned I am a pacifist. Hell, it isn't even war anymore, as far as that goes. It's an industry, a big business complex.) And it's a ridiculous thing because this bravery myth is something those young men should be able to laugh at. Of course the older men like me, their big brothers, and uncles, and maybe even their fathers, we don't help them any. Even those of us who don't openly brag. Because all the time we are talking about how scared we were in the war, we are implying tacitly that we were brave enough to stay. Whereas in actual fact we stayed because we were afraid of being laughed at, or thrown in jail, or shot, as far as that goes.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

The Paris Review interview (1958)

Pearl S.  Buck photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Men are what their mothers made them.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Paulo Freire photo

“It is not suprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Thomas Brooks photo

“God will call evil men to a strict account for all the outward good that they have enjoyed.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Joseph Conrad photo

“This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade… But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream. The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest. They lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.”

London Bridge to the Royal Albert Dock
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“When we’re talking both to Wikipedians and people outside of Wikipedia, we say, 'Look, if we want to include all of these other narratives besides the typical narrative that we usually tell of dead white men, we’ve gotta get it in there now.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.

Agatha Christie photo
Errol Flynn photo
Werner Herzog photo
Thomas Chandler Haliburton photo

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Henry Miller photo

“To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

"Reunion in Brooklyn" http://books.google.com/books?id=uzz94pR0VQsC&q=%22To+live+without+killing+is+a+thought+which+could+electrify+the+world+if+men+were+only+capable+of+staying+awake+long+enough+to+let+the+idea+soak+in%22&pg=PA131#v=onepage, Sunday After the War (1944)

Alfred Percy Sinnett photo
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet photo

“In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) French bishop and theologian

Politics Drawn from the very words of Holy Scripture edited by Patrick Riley (1990) http://books.google.com/books?id=3jiGsoP_ExgC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=%22In+the+midst+of+the+disguises+and+artifices+that+reign+among+men,+it+is+only+attention+and+vigilance+that+can+save+us+from+surprises.%22&source=bl&ots=4D_c7UqG_l&sig=22Djfz_VN-rbiENWgWqpn4s93KI&hl=en&ei=mDZ7S-vRHqX20wSg8t2pCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22In%20the%20midst%20of%20the%20disguises%20and%20artifices%20that%20reign%20among%20men%2C%20it%20is%20only%20attention%20and%20vigilance%20that%20can%20save%20us%20from%20surprises.%22&f=false
Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture (1709)

Aleister Crowley photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo
Democritus photo

“Men achieve tranquillity through moderation in pleasure and through the symmetry of life. Want and superfluity are apt to upset them and to cause great perturbations in the soul. The souls that are rent by violent conflicts are neither stable nor tranquil. One should therefore set his mind upon the things that are within his power, and be content with his opportunities, nor let his memory dwell very long on the envied and admired of men, nor idly sit and dream of them. Rather, he should contemplate the lives of those who suffer hardship, and vividly bring to mind their sufferings, so that your own present situation may appear to you important and to be envied, and so that it may no longer be your portion to suffer torture in your soul by your longing for more. For he who admires those who have, and whom other men deem blest of fortune, and who spends all his time idly dreaming of them, will be forced to be always contriving some new device because of his [insatiable] desire, until he ends by doing some desperate deed forbidden by the laws. And therefore one ought not to desire other men's blessings, and one ought not to envy those who have more, but rather, comparing his life with that of those who fare worse, and laying to heart their sufferings, deem himself blest of fortune in that he lives and fares so much better than they. Holding fast to this saying you will pass your life in greater tranquillity and will avert not a few of the plagues of life—envy and jealousy and bitterness of mind.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Warren Farrell photo