Quotes about men
page 61

“The Communist … chooses some feature of an order where there is a potential resentment, or he may choose some feature about which people are simply soft-headed—that is to say, confused or uncertain. It may be the existence of rich men; it may be the right to acquire and use property privately; it may be the idea of discipline and regard in education; it may be some system of preferential advancement which produces envy in the less successful. His most common maneuver … is to vilify this as founded upon “prejudice.” The burden of his argument usually is that since these do not have perfectly rationalized bases, they have no right to exist.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 5.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

People, Education, Idea, Success

“Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.”

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

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life, Books, Knowledge, Science

“Without some knowledge of Constitutional History it is absolutely impossible to do justice to the characters and positions of the actors in the great drama; absolutely impossible to understand the origin of parties, the development of principles, the growth of nations in spite of parties and in defiance of principles. It alone can teach why it is that in politics good men do not always think alike, that the worst cause has often been illustrated with the most heroic virtue, and that the world owes some of its greatest debts to men from whose very memory it recoils.”

William Stubbs (1825–1901) English historian and clergyman

The Constitutional History of England (1873-8; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903) vol. 1, pp. iii-iv.

World, Justice, History, Understanding

“Secondly, the educated citizen has an obligation to serve the public. He may be a precinct worker or President. He may give his talents at the courthouse, the State house, the White House. He may be a civil servant or a Senator, a candidate or a campaign worker, a winner or a loser. But he must be a participant and not a spectator. "At the Olympic games," Aristotle wrote, "it is not the finest and strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists-for out of these the prize-men are elected. So, too, in life, of the honorable and the good, it is they who act who rightly win the prizes."”

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

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Life, Education, Game, Housing

“Victory passes back and forth between men.”

Homér Iliad

VI. 339 (tr. R. Lattimore); Paris contemplates the fickleness of victory as he prepares to go into battle.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Victory

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

"Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 9. 1962, G2 — as reported in The Ayn Rand Lexicon http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/socialism.html: Objectivism from A to Z (1986)

Communication, Suicide

“[Brahmans] surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals…. His Majesty, on hearing… how much the people of the country prized their institutions, commenced to look upon them with affection.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by Abdul Qadir Badaoni, vol. II, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

People, Learning, Country

“Men who are afraid live longer.”

Edmund Cooper book A Far Sunset

A Far Sunset (1967)

“I realize now how lucky I was, in the total absence of role models, to have only men to rebel against. Today's women students are meeting their oppressors in dangerously seductive new form, as successful congenial female professors who view themselves as victims of a rigid foreign ideology.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 213

Women, Success

“What is a Poet?…He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life, Soul, Nature, Knowledge

“In the twentieth century, governments murdered, as a prudent estimate, 272,000,000 men, women and children. It could be over 400,000,000.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 75

Women, Children

“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”

Houari Boumédiène (1932–1978) Huari Bumedien

reportedly during a 1974 speech to the United Nations, as reported by Loonwatch on 25 March 2017 http://www.loonwatch.com/2017/03/25/the-1974-houari-boumedienne-u-n-speech-myth/ Misattributed

Women, Victory

“In a street brawl, I strike men quicker than lightnin', you seen what happened in my last fight, friend? Aight, then! L's a clever threat, a lyricist who never sweat, comparing yourself to me is like a Benz to a Chevrolet”

Big L (rapper) (1974–1999) American rapper

Fight

“Few great men could pass personnel.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 153.

“But in such perfect Animals as Sheep and Oxen, in whom the Heart, the Brain and Nerves differ so little from ours, and in whom the Separation of the Spirits from the Blood, the Organs of Sense, and consequently Feeling it self, are the same as they are in Human Creatures; I can't imagine how a Man not hardened in Blood and Massacre, is able to see a violent Death, and the Pangs of it, without Concern. In answer to this, most People will think it sufficient to say, that all Things being allow'd to be made for the Service of Man, there can be no Cruelty in putting Creatures to the use they were design'd for; but I have heard Men make this Reply, whilst their Nature within them has reproach'd them with the Falshood of the Assertion.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark P, pp. 187-8
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Death, People, Feeling, Imagination

“No day was more difficult for Allah’s Messenger than the Day (Battle) of Uhud in which his uncle Hamza, the lion of Allah and the lion of His Messenger, was killed, and after it was the Day of Mu'tah in which his cousin Ja'far ibn Abi Talib was killed." Then he (Zayn al-Abidin) said: "There was no day like the Day of Husayn, when thirty thousand men advanced against him (while) they claimed that they belonged to this community, and that they (wanted) to seek proximity to Allah, the Great and Almighty, through (shedding) his blood. He (al-Husayn) reminded them of Allah, but they did not learn (from him) till they killed him out of (their) oppression and aggression".”

Ali Zayn al-Abidin (659–713) Great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār 22/274, H. 21 and 44/298, H. 4.

Communication, Learning

“Some of the evils which are caused by the fallacy of an incompatibility between theory and practice having been described, it must now be admitted, that at the present time those evils show a decided tendency to decline. The extent of intercourse, and of mutual assistance, between men of science and men of practice, the practical knowledge of scientific men, and the scientific knowledge of practical men, have been for some time steadily increasing; and that combination and harmony of theoretical and practical knowledge—that skill in the application of scientific principles to practical purposes, which in former times was confined to a few remarkable individuals, now tends to become more generally diffused.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Knowledge, Science, Evil, Time

“This approach emphasizes what was once familiar enough to all Americans—and what we are now in danger of forgetting—that government derives its power from men; that rights of life and liberty are inalienable; that these rights are not something that government graciously confers upon men, but things no government can take away from men.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 5

Life, Forgetting

“Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"The Death of Politics", essay in Playboy (March 1969) http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html; also available in Hess's autobiography, Mostly on the Edge.

Communication

“2763. Avoid Men that are Hot and Quarrelsome; they will affront thee for nothing, and urge Things beyond Reason and Measure. They will bring thee into Troubles, which thou wilt not easily get out of. Keeping Company with such is living with Wolves, Bears, and Tygers.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

“With regard to men, he must know how to stimulate ambition, how to exercise discipline with firmness, and at the same time with sufficient kindness to insure the good-will and cooperation of all. The more thoroughly he is versed in questions of economics and sociology, the better prepared will he be to meet the problems that will daily confront him. As economic production depends not only on equipment and plant, but on the psychological effect of wage systems, he must be able to discriminate in regard to which wage system is best applicable to certain classes of product.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

Source: "Industrial Engineering," 1905, p. 67

Exercises, Question, Problem, Time

“When Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind, he took captives wherever he went and sent many prisoners, especially women prisoners, to his homeland. Parimal Devi and Suraj Devi, the two daughters of Raja Dahir, who were sent to Hajjaj to adorn the harem of the Caliph, were part of a large bunch of maidens remitted as one-fifth share of the state (Khums) from the booty of war (Ghanaim). The Chachnama gives the details. After the capture of the fort of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim “halted there for three day, during which time he masscered 6,000 …men. Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.” When the (total) number of prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons (Kalichbeg has sixty thousand), amongst whom thirty were the daughters of the chiefs. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of prisoners were forwarded in charge of the Black Slave Kaab, son of Mubarak Rasti.96 In Sind itself female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats”, and take the women and children as captives. In the final stages of the conquest of Sind, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim… one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number… (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”.97 Obviously, a few lakhs of women were enslaved and distributed among the elite and the soldiers.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Women, War, Children, Family

“Under the rule of free competition, war between the producers of security entirely loses its justification. Why would they make war? To conquer consumers? But the consumers would not allow themselves to be conquered. They would be careful not to allow themselves to be protected by men who would unscrupulously attack the persons and property of their rivals. If some audacious conqueror tried to become dictator, they would immediately call to their aid all the free consumers menaced by this aggression, and they would treat him as he deserved. Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 34-35

War, Peace, Nature, Personality

“If men get injured, it is another reason to ban jallikattu. Anyway, it is not a sport, but a torture to make the animal do an unnatural act. This is being practiced by a bunch of drunken youngsters.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On banning Jallikattu, as quoted in "A solitary Maneka fights ‘jallikattu’" http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-a-solitary-maneka-fights-jallikattu-9828, DNA India (14 November 2005) 2001-2010

Sport, Animals

“This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 3, Ch. 1
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Life, Law, Dependency

“When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification — first in the loss of the most inspiriting and elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness, disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another. Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow-creatures (otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 4

Life, Fear, Disappointment, Feeling

“The whole Constitution has been erected upon the assumption that the King not only is capable of doing wrong but is more likely to do wrong than other men if he is given the chance.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"What Is the Crown?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Chance

“It does not seem possible to me that a God who loved men to that degree that he died that they might be saved, abandons his children the moment they are dead. It seems to me that an infinite God might do something for a soul after it has reached the other world.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Love, God, Children, World

“Majorities are not necessarily right. If anything is known—if anything can be known—we are sure that very large bodies of men have frequently been wrong.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

“Art and politics must move closer together. Reflection and action must be equally valid in good men if history is not to take one course and art an other.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Something About a Soldier (1940)

Art, History

“Male makeup is men’s titles, status and paying for dates. Makeup is what both sexes use to bridge the gap between the power they have and the power they’d like to have. Both male and female makeup are compensations for feelings of powerlessness.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 215.

Sex, Feeling

“If I seem happy to you… You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

God, Happiness

“In the tradition of American constitutionalism, all men are equally endowed by their Creator with certain rights. The equality of man is understood in the light of man's inequality with God: because men are not and never can become God or gods — because unqualified wisdom is never available to human beings — only government by the consent of the governed, and under the rule of law, is intrinsically in accordance with the eternal order.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The End of History Means the End of Freedom (1990)

Wisdom, God, Law, Light

“When [ Diogenes] observed how other men were harassed throughout their whole lives, ever plotting against one another, ever encompassed by a thousand ills and never able to enjoy a moment’s rest, nay, not even during the great festivals nor when they proclaimed a truce; and when he beheld that they did or suffered all this simply in order to keep themselves alive, and that their greatest fear was lest their so-called necessities should fail them, and how, furthermore, they planned and strove to leave great riches to their children, he marvelled that he too did not do the like, but was the only independent man in the world.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

Source: Diogenes, or On Tyranny, p. 268

Children, World, Fear, Suffering

“The leaders who are now managing the Democratic Party in this state are the men who at the regular session of the legislature in 1861, declared that, if an army went from Indiana to assist in puting down the rebellion, it must first pass over their dead bodies.”

Oliver P. Morton (1823–1877) American politician

As contained in Treason Exposed: Record of the Disloyal Democracy https://books.google.com/books?id=1-d9AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Treason+Exposed:+Record+of+the+Disloyal+Democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisi5WmtMrLAhUCOz4KHUcHCEcQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Treason%20Exposed%3A%20Record%20of%20the%20Disloyal%20Democracy%22&f=false (1866), Republican Party (Ind.) State Central Committee, p. 1 Arraignment of the Democratic Party (June 1866)

Dead

“My purpose in writing these essays has been to acquaint men who are interested in the bearings of modern history on public life with sundry statesmen whose time was devoted not to seeking office or to winning a brief popular fame by chicanery or pettifoggery, but to serving the great interests of modern states and, indeed, of universal humanity. I would present these statesmen and their work as especially worthy to be studied by those who aspire to serve their country in any way.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. ix

Life, Way, History, Study

“The Black Artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.”

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) African-American writer

Negro Digest, vol. 14, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 65

Nature, Strong, Evil, Madness

“Women's scars and rituals involved beauty (piercing ears and noses, binding feet, and wearing corsets); men's involved protecting women. In cultures in which physical strength is still the best way to protect women, as among the Dodos in Uganda, each time a man kills a man, he is awarded a ritual scar; the more scars, the more he is considered eligible.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 72.

Women, Beauty, Way, Time

“I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Modern Times Interview of Andrea Dworkin With Larry Josephson, on "Modern Times" (American Public Radio, 1992) (radio program) (transcript of tape (end of tape missing)) http://www.andreadworkin.com/audio/moderntimes.html, as accessed Sep. 5, 2010.

Books

“Men and things rise, fall, move away, approach. Everything is a comedy of distances.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Hombres y cosas, suben, bajan, se alejan, se acercan. Todo es una comedia de distancias.
Voces (1943)

“We must work assiduously and with determined boldness to remove from the body politic this cancerous disease of discrimination which is preventing our democratic and Christian health from being realized. Then and only then will we be able to bring into full realization the dream of our American democracy-a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men do not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character, where they recognize that the basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum; a dream of a place where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, and men will dare to live together as brothers-that is the dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)

Health, Disease, Dreams, Color

“Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.”

Willa Cather book Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock (1931), Book III, Ch. 5

Friendship, Family, Joy

“In the future, women will increasingly want men who can nurture them and connect with them.”

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

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

Women, Future

“"Jubal," the face said, "I am thy loved Past,
The soul that makes thee one from first to last.
I am the angel of thy life and death,
Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath.
Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride
Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Love, Life, Death, Angels

“Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.”

Jonathan Swift book Cadenus and Vanessa

Cadenus and Vanessa (1713)

School, Food, Fools

“I had no orders, sir, to kill my own men.”

Moses Van Campen (1757–1849) American Revolutionary War scout and Indian-fighter

Sketches of Border Adventures, 1842

“If any of my readers set out with the notion that that all races of men think and act much in the same way as educated Englishmen, the evidence of superstitious belief and custom collected in this work should suffice to disabuse him of so erroneous a prepossession.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 27, Succession to the Soul.

Education, Way, Thinking

““What harm have the trees done them?” he said. “Must they punish the grass for their own faults? Men are savages, who would set a land afire because they have a quarrel with other men.””

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 9, "Orm Embar" (Arren)

Tree, Grass

“No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!—I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.”

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

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

Life, Death, God, Truth

“They [women] cannot march as far or as fast as men, or endure the front-line ordeal as well, or drive a bayonet into an enemy with the same force, or tackle bare-handed an opponent far more muscular and brutal than they are. Some may be trained to shoot well, but whether they will do so in action with male callousness (and eagerness) is doubtful. Courage doesn't come into it. Women are if anything braver than men, but the notion of a female teenager fighting hand-to-hand with a Panzer Grenadier or a Japanese White Tiger - or a Royal Marine - is ludicrous.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Defeat of the British Army. p. 181-182.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Women, Courage, Fight, Training

“There are many who say in effect that public opinion has little to do with war, that it is explained by the influence of the vested interests who profit by it — armament makers or groups of capitalists. But even when we have admitted that those interests do exert great influence, it only pushes the question further back. Why are the mass of men, millions, powerless in this matter as against a tiny minority, a few dozen or a few score or a few hundred who profit by the general disaster? There are undoubtedly some who say to the millions in effect: "We should like you to go to war because it would expand our profits."”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

But why do the millions obey?
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

War, Question

“You have got to purge the army at the top. It will have to be a drastic purge, because the spirit of the British Army has to be regained. We have in this country five or six generals, members of other nations, Czechs, Poles, and French, all of them trained in the use of German weapons and German technique…I know it is hurtful to our pride, but would it not be possible to put some of these men temporarily in charge of our men in the field?”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 381, col. 540.
Speech in the House of Commons, 2 July 1942.
1940s

Hurt, Training, Country

“The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 7, In Praise Of Politics, p. 140.

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

Love, Life, God, Children

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Food, Soul, Mountain, Flowers

“Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Way, Light, Passion, Selfishness

“I said, in response to his words, that men who wanted to do things in their own way had better make a world in their own way, because in this world things are not done like this.”

Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) Florentine sculptor and goldsmith

Dissi, a quelle parole, che gli uomini che volevan fare a lor modo, bisognava che si facessino un mondo a lor modo, perché in questo non si usava cosí.
Autobiography, vol. 1, ch. 79 (1558-66); translation from Benvenuto Cellini (trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella) My Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 132.

World, Way

“Fear of female flesh is fear of female power, and reclaiming women's bodies must go hand in hand with reclaiming women's power. This cannot be achieved simply by purchasing expensive body lotion. Men and women alike need to confront our fear of female flesh, to risk being overwhelmed by the power of women to change society and take charge of their own lives. All we need to do is acknowledge how hungry we are for that future to arrive, and take the first bite.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter 2

Women, Fear, Change, Future

“The asylum of Shariat (Shariat Panah) Qazi Abul Mukaram has sent this arzi to the sublime Court: a man known to him told him that the Hindus gather in large numbers at Kalka Temple near Barahapule (near Delhi); a large crowd of the Hindus is seen here. Likewise, large crowds are seen at (the mazars) of Khwaja Muinuddin, Shah Madar and Salar Masud Ghazi. This amounts to bid‘at (heresy) and this matter deserves consideration. Whatever orders are required should be issued…Saiyid Faulad Khan was thereupon ordered (by the Emperor) to send one hundred beldars to demolish the Kalka Temple and other structures in its neighbourhood which were in the Faujdari of the Khan himself; these men were to reach there post haste, and finish the work without a halt.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Siyah Waqa’i-Darbar, Regnal Year 10, Rabi I, 23 / 3 September 1667.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1660s

“You Hollanders are conceited and senseless people. You will make yourselves unworthy of the mercy which I now offer you. You will subject yourselves to the highest punishment by proudly opposing the great force I have brought with the merest handleful of men which I am told you have in your castle.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan, 2008, Jonathan Manthorpe, illustrated, Macmillan, 0230614248, 71, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=p3D6a7bK_t0C&pg=PA71&dq=koxinga+taiwan+always+chinese&hl=en&ei=NcbiTafrEY3ogQeB7_28Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=koxinga%20taiwan%20always%20chinese&f=false,

People

“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”

Ernest Hemingway book True at First Light

Source: True at First Light (1999), Ch. 17

Love, Stupidity, Fear, Disease

“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”

H.L. Mencken book The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908), pg. 217
1900s

Stupidity, School, Teachers

“II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nations consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, We cannot conceive.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Thinking, Fight, Country

“Sometimes societies die and putrefy long before they are pronounced dead, and sometimes men die of corruption long before they have taken to their deathbeds.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Corruptions Of the Physical Body, p. 5
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Dead

“Generally, He shewed sin, wherein that all is comprehended, but in special He shewed only these two. And these two are they that most do travail and tempest us, according to that which our Lord shewed me; and of them He would have us be amended. I speak of such men and women as for God’s love hate sin and dispose themselves to do God’s will: then by our spiritual blindness and bodily heaviness we are most inclining to these. And therefore it is God’s will that they be known, for then we shall refuse them as we do other sins.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73

Love, Women, God, Hate

“We've become a nation of con men, living by selling double glazing to each other.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

“Fathers and guardians, bishops of our Church, you ought to minister to the poor, or rather to Christ in them, and not to seek after vanities. But now you act quite contrary to this; and are vainglorious and avaricious beyond all other men.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

Christ

“Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love at Second Sight (1916), Chapter xviii.

Home, Passion

“Between man and his social environment there is a reciprocal action. Men make society what it is and society makes men what they are, and the result is therefore a kind of vicious circle.”

Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) Italian anarchist

The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader (2014)

“A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and is confirmed only by other men. Feminist fantasies about the ideal “sensitive” male have failed. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 82

“How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors…”

Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) Irish political leader

O’Connell’s Correspondence, Letter No 700, Vol II

Law

“In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 824.

Law, Success, Country

“Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has "struck out."”

Ernest Thayer Casey at the Bat

Source: Casey at the Bat, Lines 49-52.

Children, Light, Sun, Heart

“The Waleis…are even denser than Bavarian folk, though stout men with their weapons. Whoever is born in either land will blossom into a prodigy of tact and courtesy!”

Wolfram von Eschenbach book Parzival

Die sint tœrscher denne beiersch her,
unt doch bî manlîcher wer.
swer in den zwein landen wirt,
gefuoge ein wunder an im birt.
Bk. 3, st. 121, line 9; p. 72.
Parzival

“Let us imitate Him who sought the mountain-tops as His refreshment after toil, but never left duties undone or sufferers unrelieved in pain. Let us imitate Him who turned from the joys of contemplation to the joys of service without a murmur when His disciples broke in on His solitude with, "All men seek Thee; " but never suffered the outward work to blunt His desire for, nor to encroach on, the hour of still communion with His Father. Lord, teach us to work; Lord, teach us to pray.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

Pain, Mountain, Solitude, Suffering

“Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

A 14
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook A (1765-1770)

War, Food, Exercises, Wine

“Much of the present unpopularity of the theory of Americanization is due to confusion in men's minds. It has grown with such rapidity that this has been inevitable. One thinks it is summed up in learning the English language; another thinks it is achieved by becoming an American citizen; a third, that it is adopting American clothes and manners and associating with native Americans; and a fourth, that it means that everybody should be able to sing "The Star Spangled Banner". The means of Americanization are still confused with its essence. While the necessary things were being done each day to help win the war, people were asking : Can we work intelligently and effectively together in a national effort, without agreement as to the definition, the substance, and the form of Americanization? What are the probabilities of success if these matters are left to the individual determination of the thousands of persons and of agencies now at work Americanizing the 2400 or more communities having foreign-born residents? They are beginning to ask what will be the final indestructible definitions and principles of Americanization and what are to be its finally approved methods. So early in the experiment the answers can only be postulated.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

War, People, Star, Intelligence

“No one is “born gay.” The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 71

Idea, Thinking

“Great men whilst living must expect disgraces,
Dead they're ador'd—when none desire their places.”

Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) British writer

"The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated", lines 19-20, in Poems (1752), p. 87

Dead

“The real alternative to co-EXistence is co-REsistance. Experts in the field have been saying for years that Communism does not have to be tolerated. It has no moral, economic or political excuse for existing. Furthermore, it is extremely vulnerable to many types of peaceful pressures which free men have not yet used. We will discuss these in a later section. At this point it is important simply to emphasize that Communism can be beaten - and it can be done without atomic war. Therefore the whole basis for arguing coexistence collapses. Coexistence is a contradiction of terms because it means trying to coexist with world conquest, which is impossible. One must resist or be conquered. It also means accepting the status quo of one-third of the human race in bondage as a permanent working arrangement. It means accepting Communism in spite of its deceit, subversion and broken covenants. It means tolerating Communism without resistance.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

War, World, Peace, Communication

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Books, World, Peace, Hope

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

Charles James Napier (1782–1853) Commander-in-Chief in British India

Napier, William. (1851) History of General Sir Charles Napier's Administration of Scinde, London: Chapman and Hall p. 35 http://books.google.com/books?id=d84BAAAAMAAJ&vq=suttee&dq=History%20of%20the%20Administration%20of%20Scinde&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false at books.google.com. Retrieved 11 October 2013

Women

“I guess this is why I hate governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by the fine print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Hate, Fight

“Two princes who wish to remain on friendly terms should never see each other but send good and wise men to one another, and these should maintain their friendship and amend any faults.”

Philippe de Commines book Mémoires

Deux grands princes qui se voudroient bien entr'aymer, ne se devroient jamais voir, mais envoyer bonnes gens et sages les uns vers les autres, et ceux là les entretiendroient ou amenderoient les fautes.
Bk. I, ch. 14.
Mémoires

Friendship

“Cognition is autonomous; it refuses to have any answers foisted on it from the outside. Yet it suffers without protest having certain questions prescribed to it from the outside (and it is here that my heresy regarding the unwritten law of the university originates). Not every question seems to me worth asking. Scientific curiosity and omnivorous aesthetic appetite mean equally little to me today, though I was once under the spell of both, particularly the latter. Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of. Inquired of, that is, by men rather than by scholars. There is a man in each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains whom it possesses of his humanity.”

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) Jewish theologian and philosopher

in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (1961/1998), p. 97

Law, Question, Suffering, Universe

“Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women, who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

As it is: The consolation of action (p. 194)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Life, Women, World, Reality

“Someone tapped him on the shoulder. he whirled around- and stared into the angry face of Milo Axelrod, his boss. "I told you to stay and mind the shop, dammit!" the druggist roared. "You're fired!" Bartlett snapped his fingers under the older man's nose. "And this here is how much I care," he said. "You can't fire me, on account of I damn well quit. They haven't called up my regiment yet, but I'm joining the Army now, is what I'm doing. Go peddle your pills- us real men will save the country for you. A couple of months from now, after we've licked the Yankees, you can tell me you're sorry."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 33

Country

“All of a sudden, I'm thinking, these guys [Afghani men] aren't so bad. I'm like the type of asshole where if you're nice to me once, I'm your friend for life. Sure, you hacked your kid's clit off, but you were nice!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Allegedly (2004)

Life, Guy, Thinking

“As long as there have been men.... upon this globe.... we have held firmly to the notion of.... all of which must continue to be everlasting in time and infinite in space.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

Quote of Escher, 1959; as cited in '3. The approach to infinity' http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/Mihai/section3.html, in: M.C. Escher and Hyperbolic Geometry http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/Mihai/index.html - Math Explorer Club 1950's

Time

“That there is a difference between the average and the first class man is known to all employers, but that the first class man can do in most cases from two to four times as much is known to few, and is fully realized only by those who have made a thorough and scientific study of the possibilities of men.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Shop Management, 1903, p. 1346.

Study, Time

“It can never be bad to have a foundation as a man — a black man. — in a time when women are dying for men. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men.”

Usher (1978) American singer, songwriter, dancer and actor

From an interview with VIBE, " Caught Up http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hSYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22It+can+never+be+bad+to+have+a+foundation+as+a+man%22+usher&source=bl&ots=znEcU5UzFB&sig=nSA9TRsN-0VmlAwizQ_1eicZRP0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ow81T8e2JOet0QWamd2xAg&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22It%20can%20never%20be%20bad%20to%20have%20a%20foundation%20as%20a%20man%22%20usher&f=false" (July 2008), p. 65-71.

Women, Lovers, Time

“When the Prophet saw injustice, either on the part of men or on the part of Providence, he did not inquire closely into its causes, nor bend the knee to necessity, and judge the evil-doers leniently; nor again did he give himself up to despair, or doubt the strength of Righteousness, or the possibility of its victory. He simply complained, pouring out his soul in words of fire; then went his way again, fighting for his ideal, and full of hope that in time—perhaps even "at the end of time"—Righteousness would be lord over all the earth.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Priest and Prophet" (1893), p. 133

Hope, Way, Soul, Evil

“I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 2, p. 11

Soul, Forgetting

“You have surely noticed among schoolboys, that the one that is regarded by all as the boldest is the one who has no fear of his father, who dares to say to the others, "Do you think I am afraid of him?" On the other hand, if they sense that one of their number is actually and literally afraid of his father, they will readily ridicule him a little. Alas, in men’s fear-ridden rushing together into a crowd (for why indeed does a man rush into a crowd except because he is afraid!) there, too, it is a mark of boldness not to be afraid, not even of God. And if someone notes that there is an individual outside the crowd who is really and truly afraid – not of the crowd, but of God, he is sure to be the target of some ridicule. The ridicule is usually glossed over somewhat and it is said: a man should love God. Yes, to be sure, God knows that man’s highest consolation is that God is love and that man is permitted to love Him. But let us not become too forward, and foolishly, yes, blasphemously, dismiss the tradition of our fathers, established by God Himself: that really and truly a man should fear God. This fear is known to the man who is himself conscious of being an individual, and thereby is conscious of his eternal responsibility before God.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, 1847 Steere translation p. 196-197
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Love, God, Fear, Thinking

“Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001. I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude. This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks on the death of Osama bin Laden, May 5, 2011, The Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2011 http://web.archive.org/web/20110505081437/http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-death-obama-george-w-bush.html, 2010s, 2011

Love, Women, People, World