Quotes about men
page 72

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley photo

“The greatness of God is the true rebuke to the littleness of men. The greatness of Christ is the true rebuke to the littleness of Christians.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 105.

William Penn photo
Warren Farrell photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Most men make little other use of their Speech than to give evidence against their own Understanding.”

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

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

Calvin Coolidge photo
Thomas Browne photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Richard Nixon photo
William Wordsworth photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Joseph Addison photo
J. F. C. Fuller photo
Albert Camus photo
John Bright photo

“I made the flags and targets to open men's eyes.... [they] were both things - which are seen and not looked at - examined.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

John's own comment on his exhibition of the 'Flag, Target and Number' paintings in 1958
1950s

Albert Lutuli photo
The Mother photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Women's studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink. It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 242

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

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

Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From [Garson O’Toole, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/12/persist/, Purpose and Persistence Are Required for Success: Unrewarded Genius Is Almost a Proverb, Quote Investigator, January 12, 2016]
1930s

Andrea Dworkin photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Black men, Indian men, and gay men have all have something in common: They do not provide an economic security blanket for women.”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 206.

John Hagee photo
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo
Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
George William Curtis photo
Chief Seattle photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
John Gielgud photo

“I feel so sorry for those poor men sitting up there all day. They must be so cold.”

John Gielgud (1904–2000) English actor and theatre director

Quoted in Alec Guinness, Journals, February 1988. [Guinness: " John's grasp of public events was always rather tenuous. His heart however, was in the right place. [This remark] - he was pointing to the barrage balloons tethered over London."]

Warren Farrell photo

“We cannot think of dads as being nurturing if we think of men as being self-serving.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 240.

Herman Melville photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.”

Vol. 2 "On Women" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Charles Wesley photo

“"CHRIST the LORD is ris'n To-day,"
Sons of Men and Angels say,
Raise your Joys and Triumphs high,
Sing ye Heav'ns, and Earth reply.”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

Wesley J and Wesley C (1743), "Hymns and Sacred Poems", 4th edition, page 144, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/hymnsandsacredpo00wesliala
Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)

Sher Shah Suri photo

“"Sher Shah gave to many of his kindred who came from Roh money and property far exceeding their expectations."… "To every pious Afghan who came into his presence from Afghanistan, Sher Shah used to give money to an amount exceeding his expectations, and he would say, 'This is your share of the kingdom of Hind, which has fallen into my hands, this is assigned to you, come every year to receive it.'" And to his own tribe and family of Sur, who dwelt in the land of Roh, he sent an annual stipend of money, in proportion to the members of his family and retainers; and during the period of his dominion no Afghan, whether in Hind or Roh was in want, but all became men of substance. It was the custom of the Afghans during the time of sultans Bahlul and Sikandar, and as long as the dominions of the Afghans lasted, that if any Afghan received a sum of money or a dress of honour, "that sum of money or dress of honour was regularly apportioned to him, and he received it every year". Sher Shah Suri too said, "It is incumbent upon kings to give grants to imams; for the prosperity and populousment of the cities of Hind are dependent on the imams and holy men… whoever wishes that God Almighty should make him great, should cherish Ulama and pious persons, that he may obtain honour in this world and felicity in the next."”

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Abbas Sarwani, Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi, trs. E.D. vol. IV, pp. 390, 424. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

John the Evangelist photo
Warren Farrell photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.”

Volume i, p. 531
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

Miyamoto Musashi photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Stephen Fry photo
Horace photo

“So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.”
Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus

Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Catharine A. MacKinnon photo
George Sarton photo

“I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Thaddeus Stevens photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/331907383771148288, quoted in * 2018-10-25 Commander in Brief: Trump Tweets and Sexual Violence in the Military April Coan Trumpism: The Politics of Gender in a Post-Propitious America Laura Finley, Matthew Johnson Cambridge Scholars Publishing Newcastle upon Tyne 1527520315
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Donald Trump / Quotes / Donald Trump on social media / Twitter
2010s, 2013

Paulo Freire photo
Edmund Burke photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Warren Farrell photo
George Eliot photo

“He fled to his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences – perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting prudence.
In this point of trusting in some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.”

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

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 9 (at page 73-74)

Thomas Browne photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.”

Source: Hainish Cycle, Planet of Exile (1966), Chapter 4 (The Tall Young Men)

Alfred the Great photo

“Never believe the speech of all men, nor all the things that you hear sung.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

The Proverbs of Alfred, st. 19, as published in The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (1848) http://archive.org/stream/dialogueofsalomo00kembuoft#page/226/mode/2up/search/Alfred, edited by John Mitchell Kemble, p. 237.
Misattributed

Thomas Hobbes photo
Giosuè Carducci photo
Horace photo

“Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.”
Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.

Lines 372–373 http://books.google.com/books?id=hlgNAAAAYAAJ&q=%22mediocribus+esse+poetis+Non+homines+non+di+non+concessere+columnae%22&pg=PA769#v=onepage
Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)

“I'll have this on you for the rest of my life," the maid said, smiling and dangling the strand of hair before him. "Everything will be all right if all goes well between us. Otherwise I'll drag this out and show it to her."
"Put it away carefully and don't ever let her find it," Chia Lien importuned. Then catching Patience off guard, he snatched the hair from her, saying, "It's safest out of your hands and destroyed."
"Ungrateful brute," Patience said with a pretty pout. […] In his tussle with Patience Chia Lien began to feel the fire of passion burn within him. Patience now looked prettier than ever with her pouted lips and her provocative scolding. He tried again to put his arms around her and make love to her, but Patience wriggled free and fled from the room. "You shameless little wanton," Chia Lien said. "You get one all excited and then run away."
Standing outside the window, Patience retorted, "Who's trying to get you excited? You only think of your pleasure. What's going to happen to me when she finds out?"
"Don't be afraid of her," Chia Lien said. "One of these days I'll get good and mad and give that jealous vinegar jar a good and proper beating and teach her who is master. She spies on me as if I were a thief. It's all right for her to talk and laugh with the men of the family, but she grows suspicious if she sees me so much as look at another woman.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 131–132

Susan B. Anthony photo

“Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting] (1874)
Trial on the charge of illegal voting (1874)

Zane Grey photo

“!-- Recipe for greatness — --> To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.”

Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist

As quoted in The North American Almanac (1931), p. 54, this sometimes published with a prefix "Recipe for greatness —" but this does not appear in the earliest versions of it yet located.<!-- also in 1000 Brilliant Achievement Quotes: Advice from the World's Wisest (2004) by David DeFord, p. 92 -->

Anton Chekhov photo
Jane Roberts photo
Henry Cuyler Bunner photo
Samuel Butler photo
Ayn Rand photo

“BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.”

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

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 1, The Nature Of Political Rule, p. 15.

M. K. Hobson photo
Rene Balcer photo

“Women write crime better than men do. Men tend to play it safe, relying on an old-boy's network (to get work). Women feel freer. They swing for the bleachers.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Quoted in The New York Times , December 30, 2008, Onstage, Tackling Ambition and Crime: On Writers.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Undoubtedly one of the most important provisions in the preparation for national defense is a proper and sound selective service act. Such a law ought to give authority for a very broad mobilization of all the resources of the country, both persons and materials. I can see some difficulties in the application of the principle, for it is the payment of a higher price that stimulates an increased production, but whenever it can be done without economic dislocation such limits ought to be established in time of war as would prevent so far as possible all kinds of profiteering. There is little defense which can be made of a system which puts some men in the ranks on very small pay and leaves others undisturbed to reap very large profits. Even the income tax, which recaptured for the benefit of the National Treasury alone about 75 per cent of such profits, while local governments took part of the remainder, is not a complete answer. The laying of taxes is, of course, in itself a conscription of whatever is necessary of the wealth of the country for national defense, but taxation does not meet the full requirements of the situation. In the advent of war, power should be lodged somewhere for the stabilization of prices as far as that might be possible in justice to the country and its defenders.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Andrea Dworkin photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo

“We sit here safe, within a circle of swords held by other men.”

ibid
Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Margaret Fuller photo

“In times of old, as we are told,
When men more child-like at the feet
Of Jesus sat, than now,
A chivalry was known more bold
Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
Of worship more complete.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

James Fenimore Cooper photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Cenk Uygur photo

“Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.”

Cenk Uygur (1970) Turkish-American online news show host

"If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong", The Huffington Post (23 October 2005) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/if-youre-a-christian-musl_b_9349.html

Miklós Horthy photo
James Longstreet photo

“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.”

James Longstreet (1821–1904) Confederate Army general

As quoted in General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671709216 (1993), by Jeffry D. Wert, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 283

Helen Sharman photo

“There is very little difference between men and women in space.”

Helen Sharman (1963) British chemist who became the first Briton in space

Independent on Sunday, 9 June 1991

“Tyrants forbid citizens to do their duty as free men. Free government permits them to do it. Liberal education enables them to do it.”

Stringfellow Barr (1897–1982) American writer

"Liberal Education: Enabling Citizens to do their Duty as Free Men", Report of the president of St. John's College to the Board of Visitors and Governors, May, 1941. Hanging in Buchanan Hall, St. John's College Annapolis

Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Edmund Burke photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Dawn Butler photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”

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

Slavery in Massachusetts http://thoreau.eserver.org/slavery.html (1854)

John Kenneth Galbraith photo