Quotes about men
page 70

George Howard Earle, Jr. photo
Howard Zinn photo

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Vitruvius photo

“In fact, all kinds of men, and not merely architects, can recognize a good piece of work…”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VI, Chapter VIII, Sec. 10

Rajendra Prasad photo

“Today, for the first time in our long and chequered history, we find the whole of this vast land… brought together under the jurisdiction of one constitution and one union which takes over responsibility for the welfare of more than 320 million men and women who inhabit it.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

On 26 January 1950 when took over as the President of India after it was proclained by the 34th and last Governor-General of India, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari as a Republic.
Source: BBC News: 1950: India becomes a republic http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/26/newsid_3475000/3475569.stm, BBC News, 26 January 2005

Sam Walter Foss photo

“A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead;
They followed still his crooked way
And lost a hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.”

Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911) American writer

The Calf-Path http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Calf_Path, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Revilo P. Oliver photo

“For centuries we have labored under the illusion that Western Christianity was something that could be exported, and only recent events have at last made it obvious to us how vain and futile have been the labors and zeal of devoted missionaries for five centuries. When Cortez and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest and devoted missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Christian gospel to the natives. And they soon sent back home, with innocent enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. You can feel their sincerity, their piety, their ardor, and their joy in the pages of Father Sagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. And for their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they had really played in the religious conversions that gave them such joy. Far more effective than their words and their book had been the Spanish cannon that had breached the Aztec defenses and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who had slain the Aztec priests at their altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids. The Aztecs accepted Christianity as a cult, not because their hearts were touched by doctrines of love and mercy, but because Christianity was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors made them invincible.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

José Mourinho photo

“Luis Fernández has made this shock [defeat of Barcelona] a war of dogs. I only talk about men, not of rude children.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://es.eurosport.yahoo.com/27042010/47/liga-campeones-asi-nacio-mourinho-hoy-conocemos.html
2010

Thomas Carlyle photo
Isocrates photo
Chief Joseph photo
James A. Michener photo

“A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

On the heroines of Tales of the South Pacific (1947) in Commercial Appeal (31 December 1951)

Philip Massinger photo

“Out, you impostors!
Quack-salving, cheating mountebanks! Your skill
Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill.”

Philip Massinger (1583–1640) English writer

Virgin Martyr (1622), Act IV, scene i.

Tom Clancy photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

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

Bernard Cornwell photo

“He wondered again, for the hundredth hundredth time, why these men, reckoned by their country to be the dregs of society, fought so well, so willingly, so bravely.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Leroy, p. 265
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Honor (1985)

Democritus photo
Philip James Bailey photo

“The worst men often give the best advice.”

Festus (1839)

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”

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

F 84
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Jayapala photo
Robert Burton photo

“Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.”

Section 3, member 1, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

John Fante photo
Plutarch photo

“Socrates said, "Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

How a Young Man ought to hear Poems, 4
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“The real men of achievement are people who have the heroism to fuel more and more enthusiasm in their work, when they face more and more difficulties.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Stanley Baldwin photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Phyllis Chesler photo

“I am not saying that a female-dominated or Amazon society based on the oppression of men is any more "just" than is a male-dominated society based on the oppression of women. I am merely pointing out in what ways it is better for women.Perhaps someday a choice between forms of injustice will not be necessary.”

Phyllis Chesler (1940) Psychotherapist, college professor, and author

Women and Madness (2005), p. 338 (emphasis in original), and see Women and Madness (1972), pp. 287–288 (similar text).
Women and Madness (1972, 2005)

Anthony Trollope photo

“Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.”

Miss Mackenzie, Ch. 13. (1865) · Project Gutenburg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24000

John Steinbeck photo
Joseph Addison photo
Giorgio Vasari photo
William Ellery Channing photo
Walter Raleigh photo

“It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Charles Lyell photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The fact is, very few men are right in everything.”

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

The Great Infidels (1881)

Gautama Buddha photo

“… how can I permit my disciples, Mahāmati, to eat food consisting of flesh and blood, which is gratifying to the unwise but is abhorred by the wise, which brings many evils and keeps away many merits; and which was not offered to the Rishis and is altogether unsuitable?
Now, Mahāmati, the food I have permitted [my disciples to take] is gratifying to all wise people but is avoided by the unwise; it is productive of many merits, it keeps away many evils; and it has been prescribed by the ancient Rishis. It comprises rice, barley, wheat, kidney beans, beans, lentils, etc., clarified butter, oil, honey, molasses, treacle, sugar cane, coarse sugar, etc.; food prepared with these is proper food. Mahāmati, there may be some irrational people in the future who will discriminate and establish new rules of moral discipline, and who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous races, will greedily desire the taste [of meat]: it is not for these people that the above food is prescribed. Mahāmati, this is the food I urge for the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas who have made offerings to the previous Buddhas, who have planted roots of goodness, who are possessed of faith, devoid of discrimination, who are all men and women belonging to the Śākya family, who are sons and daughters of good family, who have no attachment to body, life, and property, who do not covet delicacies, are not at all greedy, who being compassionate desire to embrace all living beings as their own person, and who regard all beings with affection as if they were an only child.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Ben Hecht photo

“Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

Books

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise. They are hurt less by undeserved censure than by undeserved commendation. Abuse helps; often praise hurts.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (14 July 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Henry Van Dyke photo
Henry Adams photo

“Senators could seldom give a reason for obstruction. In every hundred men, a certain number obstruct by instinct, and try to invent reasons to explain it afterwards.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Guy De Maupassant photo

“Military men are the scourges of the world.”

Sur l’eau (1888)

William Cowper photo
Albert Einstein photo
Joycelyn Elders photo

“If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

"Dr. Joycelyn Elders is so fucking cool", 2014-05-23, Jessica Valenti, w:Jessica Valenti, 2014-05-23, Feministing.com http://web.archive.org/web/20070713094431/http://feministing.com/archives/007116.html,

Everett Dean Martin photo
Robert A. Taft photo

“About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret”

Robert A. Taft (1889–1953) politician from the United States, son of 27th US President William Howard Taft

Profiles in Courage, Kennedy, p. 191.

Frederick Douglass photo
Amir Taheri photo

“The promised “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is based on three rejections… The first rejection is of traditional Islamic tolerance for Christians and Jews — who, labeled “People of the Book,” could live in a caliphate by paying protection money (jizyeh). The idea is that the “protection” offered by Mohammad belonged to the early phase of Islam when the “Last Prophet” wasn’t strong enough. Once Mohammad had established his rule, the Daeshites note, he ordered the massacre of Jews and the expulsion of Christians from the Arabian Peninsula… The second rejection is aimed against “Infidel ideologies,” especially democracy — government of men by men rather than by Allah… Daesh’s third rejection is aimed against what is labeled “diluted” (iltiqati) forms of Islam — for example, insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. In Daesh’s view, Islam will be a religion of peace only after it has seized control of the entire world. Until then, the world will be divided between the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). There can never be peace between Islam and whatever that is not Islam. At best, Muslims can make truce (solh) with non-Muslims while continuing to prepare for the next war. Daesh also rejects the “aping of Infidel institutions” such as a presidential system, a parliament and the use of such terms as “republic.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The only form of government in “Pure Mohammadan Islam” is the caliphate; the only law is sharia.
"The ugly attractions of ISIS’ ideology" http://nypost.com/2014/11/02/the-ugly-attractions-of-isis-ideology/, New York Post (November 2, 2014).
New York Post

Angela Davis photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
Tanith Lee photo

“Odd, how different different men’s fears could be.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 1, “Avillis” (p. 7)

Samuel Adams photo
Robert Patrick (playwright) photo

“Reverend Lawson:This entire book is nothing but young men doing homosexual things together.
Bill: Well, what else could they do together?”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

Bill Batchelor Road
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Bertolt Brecht photo

“General, your tank
is a powerful vehicle
it smashes down forests
and crushes a hundred men.
but it has one defect:
it needs a driver.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"General, Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle", in "From a German War Primer", part of the Svendborg Poems (1939); as translated by Lee Baxandall in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 289
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Walter Scott photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Weak men are apt to be cruel.”

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

http://books.google.com/books?id=K6lsEtMo1KMC&q=%22Weak+men+are+apt+to+be+cruel%22&pg=PA128#v=onepage
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

“The language of men was involved with only one hemisphere in order to leave the other free for the language of the gods.”

Book I, Chapter 5, p. 103-104
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Alan Ayckbourn photo

“Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.”

Alan Ayckbourn (1939) English playwright

Preface to The Norman Conquests (New York: Grove Press, [1975] 1988) p. 11.

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Mark Knopfler photo

“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Industrial Disease
Song lyrics, Love over Gold (1982)

Irshad Manji photo
André Maurois photo
Max Beckmann photo

“The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
1900s - 1920s

Anastas Mikoyan photo
Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji photo
Henri Fayol photo
Francesco Guicciardini photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)…The evils of immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception. The same causes that brought 10,000 and 20,000, and tens of thousands, may bring hundreds of thousands, or even millions. (Hear, hear.) If that would be an evil, surely he is a statesman who would deal with it in the beginning. (Hear, hear.)…When it began we were told it was so small that it would not matter to us. Now it has been growing with great rapidity, it has already affected a whole district, it is spreading into other parts of the country…Will you take it in time (hear, hear), or will you wait, hoping for something to turn up which will preserve you from what you all see to be the natural consequences of such an invasion? …it is a fact that when these aliens come here they are answerable for a larger amount of crime and disease and hopeless poverty than are proportionate to their numbers. (Cheers.) They come here—I do not blame them, I am speaking of the results—they come here and change the whole character of a district. (Cheers.) The speech, the nationality of whole streets has been altered; and British workmen have been driven by the fierce competition of famished men from trades which they previously followed. (Cheers.)…But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise?…they are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing—less labour for the British working man.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers.
Speech in Limehouse in the East End of London (15 December 1904), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain In The East-End.’, The Times (16 December 1904), p. 8.
1900s

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.”

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

G 8
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Miguel de Unamuno photo
John Bright photo

“Working men in this hall…I…say to you, and through the Press to all the working men of this kingdom, that the accession to office of Lord Derby is a declaration of war against the working classes…They reckon nothing of the Constitution of their country—a Constitution which has not more regard to the Crown or to the aristocracy than it has to the people; a Constitution which regards the House of Commons fairly representing the nation as important a part of the Government system of the kingdom as the House of Lords or the Throne itself…Now, what is the Derby principle? It is the shutting out of much more than three-fourths, five-sixths, and even more than five-sixths, of the people from the exercise of constitutional rights…What is it that we are come to in this country that what is being rapidly conceded in all parts of the world is being persistently and obstinately refused here in England, the home of freedom, the mother of Parliaments…Stretch out your hand to your countrymen in every portion of the three kingdoms, and ask them to join in a great and righteous effort on behalf of that freedom which has so long been the boast of Englishmen, but which the majority of Englishmen have never yet possessed…Remember the great object for which we strive, care not for calumnies and for lies, our object is this—to restore the British Constitution and with all its freedom to the British people.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 August 1866), quoted in The Times (28 August 1866), p. 4.
1860s

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history's greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I'm trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.”

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

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

William Morris photo
Jay Gould photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo

“He had been across the veldt, he had seen the battlefields, the still open trenches, and it all came to Chinese labour. They were told it was going to release the slaves, the Uitlanders, to open up South Africa to a great flood of white emigrants. They were told it was going to plant the Union Jack upon the land of the free. But the echoes of the muskets had hardly died out on the battlefields, the ink on the treaty was hardly dry, before the men who plotted the war began to plot to bring in Chinese slaves. (Cheers.) They could talk about their gold; their gold is tainted. (Hear, hear.) They could talk about employing white men; it was not true, and even if it were true, was he going to stand and see his white brothers degraded to the position of yellow slave drivers? No, he was not. (Loud and continued cheers.) These patriots! These miserable patriots! If they had had the custodianship of the opinions of the country 75 years ago, slavery in the colonies would have continued. When the north was fighting the south for the liberty of men, these men would have counted their guineas, would have told them how many white men had plied the lash in the southern states, and they would have said that for miserable cash, miserable trash, the great name of the country required to be bought and sold. Thank God there were no twentieth century Unionist imperialists in office then.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Leicester Daily Mercury (6 January 1906)
1900s

Jadunath Sarkar photo
Jack London photo
Richard Feynman photo

“We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

note (c. 1945), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 204

Walter Savage Landor photo
Farah Pahlavi photo
Plutarch photo

“When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.”

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

James Comey photo