Quotes about men
page 64

Taliesin photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert Jordan photo
John Bright photo
John the Evangelist photo

“Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Jesus in John 3:19-20 KJV
Gospel of John

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

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

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

William James photo
David Berg photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England…owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes. I worked for many years in an industrial business, and had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men…I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time. It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground, a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handle of a wheelbarrow, smoking their pipes. Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survivor of that type of works, and ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925

Henry Clay photo

“To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.”

Stan Rogers (1949–1983) Folk singer

Northwest Passage (1981)

Ron Paul photo

“Well, gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense. […] First, these men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners. These conditions do not make one's older years the happiest. Second, because sex is the center of their lives, they want it to be as pleasurable as possible, which means unprotected sex. Third, they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1994
January
AIDS Dementia
Ron Paul Survival Report
5
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/SR_Jan94_p5.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Survival Report

Anthony Burgess photo
Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo
Warren Farrell photo

“In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

The Other Half: A Self Portrait http://books.google.com/books?id=4gg0AAAAMAAJ&q=%22In+time+of+war+all+countries+behave+equally+badly+because+the+power+of+action+is+handed+over+to+stupid+and+obstinate+men%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage (1977)

André Maurois photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Hans von Seeckt photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody. God knows why they should be: it is generally shadows they are afraid of.”

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

As quoted in American Chronicle (1945) by Ray Stannard Baker, quoted on unnumbered page opposite p. 1
1920s and later

Orson Scott Card photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Rod Serling photo
Maimónides photo

“Whatever God desires to do is necessarily done; there is nothing that could prevent the realisation of His will. The object of His will is only that which is possible, and of the things possible only such as His wisdom decrees upon. When God desires to produce the best work, no obstacle or hindrance intervenes between Him and that work. This is the opinion held by all religious people, also by the philosophers; it is also our opinion. For although we believe that God created the Universe from nothing, most of our wise and learned men believe that the Creation was not the exclusive result of His will; but His wisdom, which we are unable to comprehend, made the actual existence of the Universe necessary. The same unchangeable wisdom found it as necessary that non-existence should precede the existence of the Universe. Our Sages frequently express this idea in the explanation of the words, "He hath made everything beautiful in his time" (Eccl. iii. 11)… This is the belief of most of our Theologians; and in a similar manner have the Prophets expressed the idea that all parts of natural products are well arranged, in good order, connected with each other, and stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect; nothing of them is purposeless, trivial, or vain; they are all the result of great wisdom. …This idea occurs frequently; there is no necessity to believe otherwise; philosophic speculation leads to the same result; viz., that in the whole of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary, especially in the nature of the spheres, which are in the best condition and order, in accordance with their superior substance.”

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

Arthur Scargill photo
Francois Rabelais photo

“In all companies there are more fools than wise men, and the greater part always gets the better of the wiser.”

En toutes compagnies il y a plus de folz que de sages, et la plus grande partie surmonte tousjours la meilleure.
Chapter 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=wfRKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22En+toutes+compagnies+il+y+a+plus+de+folz+que+de+sages+et+la+plus+grande+partie+surmonte+tousjours+la+meilleure%22&pg=PA285#v=onepage.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532)

James Thurber photo

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

J. B. S. Haldane photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Men take more pains to hide than to mend themselves.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections

Anne Hutchinson photo

“I shall I not equivocate, there is a meeting of men and women and there is a meeting only for women.”

Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) participant in the Antinomian Controversy

Trial and Interrogation (1637)

Warren Farrell photo
Edith Hamilton photo
Newt Gingrich photo
Henry R. Towne photo

“Among the names of those who have led the great advance of the industrial arts during the past thirty years, that of Frederick Winslow Taylor will hold an increasingly high place. Others have led in electrical development, in the steel industry, in industrial chemistry, in railroad equipment, in the textile arts, and in many other fields, but he has been the creator of a new science, which underlies and will benefit all of these others by greatly increasing their efficiency and augmenting their productivity. In addition, he has literally forged a new tool for the metal trades, which has doubled, or even trebled, the productive capacity of nearly all metal-cutting machines. Either achievement would entitle him to high rank among the notable men of his day; — the two combined give him an assured place among the world's leaders in the industrial arts.
Others without number have been organizers of industry and commerce, each working out, with greater or less success, the solution of his own problems, but none perceiving that many of these problems involved common factors and thus implied the opportunity and the need of an organized science. Mr. Taylor was the first to grasp this fact and to perceive that in this field, as in the physical sciences, the Baconian system could be applied, that a practical science could be created by following the three principles of that system, viz.: the correct and complete observation oi facts, the intelligent and unbiased analysis of such facts, and the formulating of laws by deduction from the results so reached. Not only did he comprehend this fundamental conception and apply it; he also grasped the significance and possibilities of the problem so fully that his codification of the fundamental principles of the system he founded is practically complete and will be a lasting monument to its founder.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Henry R. Towne, in: Frank Barkley Copley, Frederick W. Taylor, father of scientific management https://archive.org/stream/frederickwtaylor01copl, 1923. p. xii.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
A.E. Housman photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Henry Adams photo
Michael Collins (Irish leader) photo

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Harold Wilson photo
James K. Morrow photo
Edgar Degas photo

“I remember a story my father used to tell. As he was coming home one day, he ran across a group of men who were firing on the troops from an ambush. During the excitement a daring onlooker went up to one of the snipers who seemed to be a poor marksman. He took the man's gun and brought down a soldier, then handed it back to its owner who motioned as if to say, 'No, go on. You're a better shot than I am.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

But the stranger said, 'No, I'm not interested in politics.'
Vollard, Degas and others were talking about the revolution of 1847. Somebody remarked to Degas that he must have been quite young at that time. Than Degas start to quote his father.
Source: posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927), p. 40

C. Wright Mills photo
David Lindsay photo
Charles Darwin photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married, too.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

A Little Book in C major http://books.google.com/books?id=EAJbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Bachelors+know+more+about+women+than+married+men+If+they+didn't+they'd+be+married+too%22&pg=PA61#v=onepage (1916) ; later published in A Mencken Crestomathy (1949)
1910s

Woody Allen photo
Andrew Dickson White photo

“Carlyle uttered a pregnant truth when he said that the history of any country is in the biographies of the men who made it.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

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

Thomas More photo

“For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Richard III and His Miserable End (1543)

Thomas Jefferson photo

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, often quoted as if in reference solely to the document the Declaration of Independence (24 June 1826)
1820s

Oliver Cromwell photo
John Fante photo
John Ogilby photo

“Whence Men, a hard Race, sprung.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks

James Branch Cabell photo
John Gower photo

“For whan men wene best to have achieved,
Ful ofte it is al newe to beginne:
The werre hath no thing siker, thogh he winne.”

John Gower (1330–1408) English writer

"In Praise of Peace", line 117.

Calvin Coolidge photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Warren Farrell photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
William Osler photo

“No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.”

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

"The Student Life" in The Medical News (30 September 1905).

Curt Flood photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Thomas Haynes Bayly photo

“Why don't the men propose, Mamma?
Why don't the men propose?”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

Why don't the Men propose?, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Ilana Mercer photo

“ISIS and an abstract ideology called 'radical Islamic terrorism'—a redundancy, if ever there was one, since Islam unreformed is radical—are not attacking us. Men and women upon whom we've conferred the right to live among us are.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Manchester Massacre And The Immigration Vexation," http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/manchester_massacre_and_the_immigration_vexation.html American Thinker, May 25, 2017
2010s, 2017

Thomas Carlyle photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo

“O Rāma, the noble son of Kausalyā! The Sandhyā of the morning commences. O the lion amongst men! Arise, the Vedic daily tasks are to be performed.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

kausalyāsuprajā rāma pūrvā saṃdhyā pravartate ।
uttiṣṭha naraśārdūla karttavyaṃ daivamāhnikam ॥
Śrīsītārāmasuprabhātam

Francis Bacon photo
John Bright photo
Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“There was an NPR story this morning, about the indigenous peoples of Australia, which might make a good column. Apparently they want to preserve their culture, language, and religion because they're slowly disappearing, which is certainly understandable. But, for some reason, they also want more stuff — better education, housing, etc. — from the Australian government. Isn't it odd that it never occurs to such groups that maybe, just maybe, the reason their cultures are evaporating is that they get too much of that stuff already? Indeed, I'm at a loss as to how mastering algebra and biology will make aboriginal kids more likely to believe — oh, I dunno — that hallucinogenic excretions from a frog have spiritual value. And I'm at a loss as to how better clinics and hospitals will do anything but make the shamans and medicine men look more useless. And now that I think about it, that's the point I was trying to get at a few paragraphs ago, when I was talking about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and the hurly-burly of life. Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. These traditions are based on habits necessary for survival, and day-to-day problem solving. Wealth, technology, and medicine have the power to shatter tradition because they solve problems.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

( August 15, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg081501.shtml)
2000s, 2001

William Ralph Inge photo

“It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

" Our Present Discontents http://books.google.com/books?id=dFYPAQAAIAAJ&q="It+is+becoming+impossible+for+those+who+mix+at+all+with+their+fellow-men+to+believe+that+the+grace+of+God+is+distributed+denominationally"&pg=PA32#v=onepage" (August 1919) in Outspoken Essays (1919), p. 32

Bell Hooks photo
Éamon de Valera photo

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Radio broadcast http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/, "On Language & the Irish Nation" (17 March 1943), often called "The Ireland that we dreamed of" speech

Albert Camus photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3387. Men apt to promise, are apt to forget.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Karen Lord photo

“Let me tell you, I have seen men who are trying to find themselves, and I have seen men who are trying to lose themselves, but rare indeed is the man who knows exactly who he is and where he is at.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 18 “A Spider in His Parlour and a Very Eager Fly” (p. 139)

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“It ain't by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied—
I scent wich pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 6, st. 10
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

Margaret Mead photo
Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo