Quotes about men
page 70

“At this moment the most stable Government in the world is our own, and it is solely because, in its real essence, it is the most free, in the only sense in which Freedom really exists; where men can act at their own free discretion, restrained only by the necessities of Justice. If the spirit of the Constitution is to be observed, that great instrument is always self-preserving. It needs only to be followed to be safeguarded.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty? (1920) by George H. Earle, Jr.

World, Justice, Sense, Freedom

“It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Ch. 6 http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnint6.html A People's History of the United States (1980)

Women, History, Reading, Country

“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

Faith, Way, Soul, Reality

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

Vitruvius book De architectura

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

“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

Women, History, Time

“A hint of ‘I’m so pleased that you strong, handsome, stalwart men are going to stand between my flower-like beauty and danger,’ wouldn’t hurt either”

Alice Borchardt book The Silver Wolf

The Silver Wolf

Beauty, Flowers, Strong, Hurt

“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).

Way, Dead

“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

Love, Books, Religion, Feeling

“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

War, Children, Dogs

“The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Truth, Age, Law, Dependency

“… all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes (Greeks) for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations, if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of Hellas.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

To Philip, 5.154 (Loeb)

“I only ask of the Government to be treated as all other men are treated. If I cannot go to my own home, let me have a home in a country where my people will not die so fast.”

Chief Joseph (1840–1904) Nez Percé Chieftain

Lincoln Hall Speech (1879)

People, Home, Country

“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)

“The men in the laboratory… cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all. …The sense data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. …What is directly observable is only a sign of the "physical fact"; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

Sense, Science, Parting

“In some form or other the rivalry of men will continue to be employed as an instrument of the general welfare. It is not important that the arrangements which currently are set down as the competitive system will endure. It is important that the spirit of competition shall be enhanced and not impaired. There must be an outlet for the creative urge, free play for the dynamic drive. In a society, as in the physical world, motion is inseparable from life.”

Walton Hale Hamilton (1881–1958) Yale Law Professor

Walton H. Hamilton (1957), The politics of industry, p. 168-69; as cited in: Arnold, Thurman. " Walton Hale Hamilton https://www.jstor.org/stable/794455." The Yale Law Journal 68.3 (1959): 399-400.

Life, World

“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.

Cheating

“Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one — or take equivalent action, I suppose.”

Tom Clancy book Red Rabbit

Red Rabbit (2002)
2000s

War, Fear

“It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, World, Home, Appearance

“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

Love, Women

“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)

Time, Country

“Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.”

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

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

God, Health, Passion, Betrayal

“No one respects a man who is always apologizing and backpedaling. No one respects a man who is always asking for permission. No one respects a man who won't stand up for himself or fight for his own interests. No one wants to cheer for a team that stopped playing to win. Most people would agree that men who don't play to win deserve to lose.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 40-41
Becoming A Barbarian (2016)

People, Fight

“The worst men often give the best advice.”

Philip James Bailey Festus

Festus (1839)

“Making the future and the road to the future wealth lies in the youth of the present and future, and rebuilding the nation’s institutions based on knowledgeable scientific foundations that require promising human capacities derived from college graduates. Universities are the makers of men, we are proud of their role and of the efforts of their administrators.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

May 8, 2005, at the First Scientific Conference of the Faculty of Commerce – Islamic University of Gaza, Gaza Palestine.

Youth, Knowledge, Effort, Universe

“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)

“That is also how Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave 500,000 “beautiful men and women” in Waihind after he had killed 15,000 fighting men in a “splendid action” in November 1001 C. E. Utbi informs us that Jaipal, the Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, “his children and grandchildren, his nephews, and the chief men of his tribe, and his relatives, were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan (Mahmud) like common evil-doers… Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on their neck.””

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

In every campaign of Mahmud large-scale massacres preceded enslavement.
Utbi, E.D., II, 26. Minhaj, 607, n., 5. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Women, Children, Beauty, Evil

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

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

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

“An old woman wept among the white faces. Two men carrying a body. An old dog crawling on his belly, dragging his hind legs. Several bodies in the corner of the lot, beside a shed, blood-soaked sheets covering them. An ambulance.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Dogs

“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)

Drink

“The author of the history of Mahmood Shah relates, that in the year AH 872 (AD 1468), the King saw the holy Prophet (Mahomed) in a dream, who presented before him a magnificent banquet of the most delicate viands. This dream was interpreted by the wise men as a sign that he would soon accomplish a conquest by which he would obtain great treasures, which prediction was soon after verified in the capture of Girnal….“In the year AH 873 (AD 1469), Mahmood Shah marched towards the country of Girnal, the capital of which bears the same name…“…The victorious army, without attacking the fort of Girnal, destroyed all the temples in the vicinity; and the King sending out foraging parties procured abundance of provisions for the camp…“The King, being desirous that the tenets of Islam should be propagated throughout the country of Girnal, caused a city to be built, which he called Moostufabad, for the purpose of establishing an honourable residence for the venerable personages of the Mahomedan religion, deputed to disseminate its principles; Mahmood Shah also took up his residence in that city…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511)Girnar (Gujarat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Religion, Dreams, History, Victory

“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto III
Queen Mab (1813)

Truth, Soul, Game, Nature

“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

People

“Lately some picked graduates from Canada are beginning to play their part in looking after those parts of the Empire where the white man goes out, often alone, to teach, to educate and to bring along the more backward races of Empire. There is no more self-sacrificing work, there is no finer work, and you see Canadians to-day in the Sudan, Malaya, Mauritius, and in the colonial service generally—medical men, highly educated men in the Civil Service, helping to bear the white man's burden. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that it is not enough for a country to concentrate solely on making a lot of money for itself; that a real spiritual force comes into it when its sons are ready, as for generations Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen have been ready, to give up the comforts and ease of home life and go out on that pioneer work to bring forward those backward parts of the world and try to help them to benefit from the things that have profited us to much in the years past.”

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

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 75-76.
1927

Life, Money, World, Education

“Most American men of affairs have learned well the rhetoric of public relations, in some cases even to the point of using it when they are alone, and thus coming to believe it.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 5.

Learning

“I am a -living shadow and Thou the Truth… Therefore, my God, Thou art alike shadow and Truth; Thou art alike the image and the Exemplar of myself and all men.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

God, Truth, Art

“She must have walked through life with men like him falling at her feet, squashing them underfoot like autumn leaves. It probably happened so often that all she noticed was that nice crunching sound.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 21 (p. 357)

Life, Autumn

“There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Money, War, People, Hope

“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)

Women, Way

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

Anthony Trollope Miss Mackenzie

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

“If I choose to impose individual blame for all past social ills, there will be no one left to like in some of the most fascinating periods of our history. For example […] if I place every Victorian anti-Semite beyond the pale of my attention, my compass of available music and literature will be pitifully small. Though I hold no shred of sympathy for active persecution, I cannot excoriate individuals who acquiesced passively in a standard societal judgment. Rail instead against the judgment, and try to understand what motivates men of decent will.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"The Moral State of Tahiti—and of Darwin", p. 269
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Music, History, Literature, Motivation

“Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

Age

“Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 93.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Fools, Nature, Sense, Change

“Titian, having adorned Venice, or rather all Italy and other parts of the world, with excellent paintings, well merits to be loved and respected by artists, and is in many things to be admired and imitated also, as one who has produced, and is producing, works of infinite merit; nay, such as must endure while the memory of illustrious men shall remain.”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Source: Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1852, p. 402.

Love, World, Memory, Parting

“The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of the slave.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Slavery (1835)

Truth, World, Nature

“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

Nature, Forgetting

“The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world. These they taught were of two kinds-the Cataclysm, or destruction by deluge, which sweeps away the whole human race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of nature; and the Ekpyrosis, or conflagration, which dissolves the globe itself. From the Egyptians also they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men, and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them; after which calamity, Astrea again descended on the earth, to renew the golden age.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

God, Age, World, Nature

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

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

The Great Infidels (1881)

“… 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

Life, Women, People, Family

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

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

Books

Loyalty

“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)

Help, Hurt

“For men have dulled their eyes with sin,
And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt,
And built their temple-walls to shut thee in,
And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

God of the Open Air, st. III (1904).

Light

“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)

“Military men are the scourges of the world.”

Guy De Maupassant book Sur l'eau

Sur l’eau (1888)

World

“Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: The Negro's Complaint (1788), Lines 1-8

Pleasure, Home, Rage

“The world needs new moral impulses which, I'm afraid, won't come from the churches, heavily compromised as they have been throughout the centuries. Perhaps those impulses must come from scientists in the tradition of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. In spite of failures and persecutions, these men devoted their lives to proving that the universe is a single entity, in which, I believe, a humanized God has no place. The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation! And as man becomes conscious of the stupendous laws that govern the universe in perfect harmony, he begins to realize how small he is. He sees the pettiness of human existence, with its ambitions and intrigues, its "I am better than thou" creed. This is the beginning of cosmic religion within him; fellowship and human service become his moral code. And without such moral foundations, we are hopelessly doomed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 66

God, People, World, Religion

“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,

“Women don't suffer from penis envy. Men do.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Something Happened (1974)

Women, Suffering, Envy

“It is children and savages and the illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said that this is characteristic of "higher men."”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 88

Children, Faith

“The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Problem Solving

Secret, Problem, Time, Personality

“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.

Justice

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, People, Hope, Time

“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

Money, War, People, Books

“It goes without saying that the police would be unable to set into motion their racist machinery were they not sanctioned and supported by the judicial system. The courts not only consistently abstain from prosecuting criminal behavior on the part of the police, but they convict, on the basis of biased police testimony, countless Black men and women.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

Women, Behavior, Support, Parting

“The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!"”

Gustave Flaubert book Salammbô

The devout exclaimed: "Lord! Eat!"
Salammbô (1862), Ch. 13 : Moloch

People, Time

“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De docta ignorantia http://www.challzine.net/29/29extraterr.html

Life, God, People, Star

“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)

Fear

“Did the protection we received annul our rights as men, and lay us under an obligation of being miserable? Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in infancy?
’Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as a reward for a defense of our property a surrender of those inestimable privileges, to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone give value to that very property.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech in Philadelphia (1776)

“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)

Books

“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)

“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Countess Brenhilda in Count Robert of Paris (1832), Ch. 25.

Life, Water

“We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Wisdom, Children, Light, Suffering

“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

“Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.”

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835–1913) clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church South

Power Through Prayer.

Love, God, Faith, Business

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

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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

God

“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.

Women, Money

“It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.”

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

“Uses of Great Men,”
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Beauty, Soul, Painting, Personality

“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)

“Many Muslim women will not consider themselves as inferior but wear a veil because they feel as dignified human beings. Because they want to protect themselves against staring and judging by men. If women are so dignified, why is it the burden of women to cover up, in order to protect themselves from the stares of men? Why can't be accepted from men to control their own instincts or animal behaviour? This is a question that I have never heard a satisfactory answer from a Muslim women.”

Irshad Manji (1968) Feminist from Canada, author, journalist, activist

Muslims need critical thinking - Irshad Manji http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0818verhofstadt.html August 18, 2004 (interview by Dirk Verhofstadt)

Women, Feeling, Question, Animals

“Agreeable men are those who are interested in everything; men who accomplish things, who finish their tasks, are those who, during a given period of time, interest themselves in one thing only. In America these men are said to possess "single-track minds"' their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they succeed, by repeated attacks, in demolishing the obstacles that hinder their progress.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Time

“Marriage is god's way to ensure there are few great men”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 55
Dark Rooms (2002)

God, Marriage, Way

“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

Life

“Ordinary people abroad take a better attitude toward men who come as guests with their wives. And if they are accompanied by other members of their family, that disposes people even more favorably toward them. Therefore, I would propose that Khrushchev take Nina Petrovna with him and also include in the delegation other members of his family. This will be well received by ordinary Americans, and that would be better for us.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

As quoted in "Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Vol. 3 : Statesman (2007), by Nikita Khrushchev, p. 95

People, Family

“The three wise men from the east recognised this planetary importance in the birth of Jesus Christ. Perhaps these wise men saw Dattatreya in baby Jesus. That is how the date December 25 was finalised. It is said in Datta Purana (mythology) that Dattatreya appears as child, Unmatta etc.
In those days the three wise men from the east recognised the power of Jesus. This day the wise men from the west are experiencing Jesus in Datta Peetham. For the men of reality the concept of east and west are just lines in the air.
Understanding the above may not be possible in just one reading. Read it several times and you will understand the underlying and profound concept. Swamiji has seen in a Church in Basel, Switzerland Jesus with three heads like Dattatreya. This potentiates the above statements.
Let us understand the above and from now onwards let us correlate Datta Jayanti and Christmas in our hearts and experience the unified divine power.”

Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji (1942) Indian guru

Christmas · Datta Jayanti (1996)

Birth, Understanding, Reality, Appearance

“Every employee in an undertaking, then, takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. This is why we often see men, who are specially gifted, gradually rise from the lowest to the highest level of the industrial hierarchy, although they have only had an elementary education. But young men, who begin practical work as engineers soon after leaving industrial schools, are in a particularly good position both for learning administration and for showing their ability in this direction, for in administration, as in all other branches of industrial activity, a man’s work is judged by its results.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 908

Education, School, Learning

“Frank sincerity is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing to every one, while simulation, on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yet for a man's self, simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sincerity tending rather to the interest of others. But since it cannot be denied that it is not a fine thing to deceive, I would commend him whose conduct is as a rule open and straightforward, and who uses simulation only in matters of the gravest importance and such as very seldom occur; for in this way he will gain a name for honesty and sincerity, and with it the advantages attaching to these qualities. At the same time, when, in any extreme emergency, he resorts to simulation, he will draw all the greater advantage from it, because from his reputation for plain dealing his artifice will blind men more.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Number 104.
Counsels and Reflections (1857)

Way, Time, Drawing, Sincerity

“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

People, Disease, Hope, Way

“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)

Learning

“But the truth is that my work — I was going to say my mission — is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

Life, War, Truth, Faith

“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

War, People, World, Exercises

“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)

Love, Death, Angels, Behavior

“I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.”

William Morris book A Dream of John Ball

Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 4: The Voice of John Ball

Fight

“I have the disadvantage of not being sociable. Wall Street men are fond of company and sport. A man makes one hundred thousand dollars there and immediately buys a yacht, begins to race fast horses, and becomes a sport generally. My tastes lie in a different direction. When business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of the day with my wife, my children, and books of my library. Every man has natural inclinations of his own. Mine are domestic. They are not calculated to make me particularly popular in Wall Street, and I cannot help that.”

Jay Gould (1836–1892) American businessman

Also quoted in The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (1986) by Maury Klein
Jay Gould : A Character Sketch (1893)

Children, Lie, Books, Home

“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

God, War, Fight, Country

“when a class of men is publicly depressed and harassed (as under Muslim rule)… it merely contents itself with dragging on an animal existence. The Hindus could not be expected to produce the utmost of what they were capable… Amidst such social conditions, the human hand and the human mind cannot achieve their best; the human soul cannot soar to its highest pitch.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb, p.153. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Soul, Animals

“…men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild (1903)

Dogs, Strong

“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

Thinking

“Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the dust or into the furnace.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Cromwell and Noble".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“I follow the works of Iranian artists even now, sometimes in Paris or in New York and I am happy Iranian artists are still great. Whether they are men or women, they have always been great. Despite all the pressure and censorship inside the country, they haven't been able to stop the creativity of our artists. Some have to work underground, like in cinema, and sometimes their work has political messages, but the number of our artists now has definitely grown in comparison to the past.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Former queen of Iran on assembling Tehran's art collection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/01/queen-iran-art-collection, The Guardian, (August 1, 2012). Interviews

Women, Past, Country, Happiness

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

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“The truth is that what really needs fixing is something only a few, like President Obama, are willing to speak about, perhaps because it is so daunting a task. Through the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the President is addressing the disproportionate challenges faced by young men of color. For instance, data shows that the percentage of young men not working or not enrolled in school is nearly twice as high for blacks as it is for whites. This initiative, and others like it, is about doing the hard work to grow drug-resistant and violence-resistant kids, especially in communities of color, so they never become part of that officer’s life experience.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Life, Truth, School, Color

Quotes about men page 70

Quotes about men
page 70