Quotes about men
page 76

“All men do the best they can. But none meet life honestly and few heroically.”

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

As quoted in Infidels and Heretics : An Agnostic's Anthology (1929) edited by Clarence Darrow and Wallace Rice, p. 206

“Moral training which does not encourage critical examination of popular ideas of what is right and good, does not tend to make men better, but only of one mind.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 183

Idea, Training

“Since it seems to be the nature of man that he wants to go to hell as quickly as possible, it is not surprising that effective base rhetoricians can greatly accelerate this process for millions. … Many individuals try to drive men into slavery, as if they were cattle, but only a few succeed. These we hail as “great historical figures.” I submit that we cannot judge the noble rhetorician by this standard. Since he urges men to be better than they are, the noble rhetorician cannot possibly succeed in changing those who prefer to remain as they are or become evil. Indeed, because his task is to bring men to themselves, not to him, the noble rhetorician ought not to be judged by his manifest effect on others at all. Rather, he ought to be judged by the clarity and steadfastness with which he proclaims his counsel. Should not a single person heed his advice, the noble rhetorician would still have to be judged successful in proportion as he succeeds in perfecting his own language. … In the final analysis, what Karl Kraus sought was to purify himself by purifying his own language. He achieved his goal. He dies a semantic saint in a semantically satanic society.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Anti-Freud (1990), pp. 56-57.

Hell, Nature, Evil, Change

“Turn parson, Colman, that’s the way to thrive;
Your parsons are the happiest men alive.”

Robert Lloyd (poet) (1733–1764) English poet and satirist

‘The Law-Student’ (1762)

Way

“It is universally agreed, that custom, in time, becomes a second nature, forcing men to use that, whether good or bad, to which they have been habituated; in fact, we see habit, in many instances, gain the ascendency over reason. This is so undeniably true, that, virtuous men, by keeping company with wicked, often fall into the same vicious course of life. Seeing and considering all this, I have decided to write on the vice of intemperance, in eating and drinking. Now, though all are agreed, that intemperance is the parent of gluttony, and sober living the offspring of abstemiousness, yet, owing to the power of custom, the former is considered a virtue, and the latter as mean and avaricious, and so many men are blinded and besotted to such a degree, that they come to the age of forty or fifty, burdened with strange and painful infirmities, which render them decrepit and useless, whereas, had they lived temperately and soberly, they would in all probability, have been sound and hearty, to the age of eighty and upwards.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life, Pain, Age, Drink

“What joins men together, he said, is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

“I bequeath my soul to God… My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

His will (1626)

God, Age, Soul, Memory

“A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men — and people in general.”

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) playwright and writer

As quoted in Wild Women Talk Back : Audacious Advice for the Bedroom, Boardroom, and Beyond (2004) by Autumn Stephens, p. 15

People, Loneliness

“The two men who lived there were father & son – that his name was Maretts [perhaps Maritz] … We gave him some tracts which he received with great pleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, he feelingly answered no, and that when he was last in the Cape about two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he found he had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it. Mr. Moffat immediate brought his octavo bible from which he preached and presented it to him. He hugged the bible in his arms with the apparent affection as if it has been his own child. I mentioned that it would show him the way to heaven, which he said he believed it would do. Nothing which I witnessed on the journey delighted me more than the manner in which the father and son acted towards this copy of the scriptures. After the evening worship was over they carried the treasure in triumph to their home.”

John Campbell (missionary)

Campbell's recollection in 1819 after a visit to Swellendam, quoted in Die Wêreld van Susanna Smit, 1799–1863, Schoeman (1995)

Pleasure, Way, Home

“Old women snore violently. They are like bodies into which bizarre animals have crept at night; the animals are vicious, bawdy, noisy. How they snore! There is no shame to their snoring. Old women turn into old men.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

"What Is the Connection Between Men and Women?" Mademoiselle (February 1970)

Women, Animals, Night

“His Majesty's Government contemplate the inclusion in the R. A. F. contingent in the March of a representative party of 25 Polish airmen (including one officer) who fought in the Battle of Britain. There will he no separate representation of other Polish armed forces now in this country, since these do not form part of His Majesty's Forces, but the Polish Government have been invited to send a contingent of three high-ranking officers, three aides-de-camp or staff officers and a flag party of three men, followed by a detachment of.24 men representative of the Polish fighting services.”

Hector McNeil

Hansard, HC Dec 21 May 1946 vol 423 c64W

Fight, Parting, Country

“[Speaking about women’s friendships] If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in Stumped Magazine (February 2002) http://stumpedmagazine.com/interviews/jennifer-beals-transcript.html.

Women, Friendship, Fight

“There have been errors in the administration of the most enlightened men.”

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818) Lord Chief Justice of England

Rex v. Lambert and Perry (1810), 2 Camp. 405.

Error

“I have directed the Commissary and Quartermaster-General of this department to lay in provisions and provender, upon the back road to Philadelphia, for twenty thousand men for three months. The principal magazine will be at Aquackanock. I shall fortify it as soon as possible, and secure that post and the pass at the bridge, which is now repaired and fit for an army to pass over, with the baggage and artillery.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 October 1776)

“[H]e knew that fear of an enemy can often blind men to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2005)

World, Fear

“It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it—in other words, by becoming civilized—that men become fully human.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Sex and the Shakespeare Reader http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 2003). <br class="br">City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Learning

“The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

L'amour de la justice n'est en la plupart des hommes que la crainte de souffrir l'injustice.
Maxim 78.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love, Fear, Justice, Suffering

“The Diary of Vaslav Nijinjsky reaches a limit of sincerity beyond any of the documents that we have referred to on this study. There are other modern works that express the same sense that civilized life is a form of living death; notably the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the novels of Franz Kafka; but there is an element of prophetic denunciation in both, the attitude of healthy men rebuking their sick neighbors. We possess no other record of the Outsider's problems that was written by a man about to be defeated and permanently smashed by those problems.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 115

Life, Death, Problem, Sense

“News of the atrocities, which have recently been perpetrated by the Turkish king in Constantinople and have now been divulged, has so inflamed a man [Cusa himself] who once saw that region, with zeal for God, that amongst many sighs he asked the Creator of all things if in His kindness He might moderate the persecution, which raged more than usual on account of diverse religious rites. Then it occurred that after several days—indeed on account of lengthy, continuous meditation—a vision was manifested to the zealous man, from which he concluded that it would be possible, through the experience of a few wise men who are well acquainted with all the diverse practices which are observed in religions across the world, to find a unique and propitious concordance, and through this to constitute a perpetual peace in religion upon the appropriate and true course.”

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

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

God, World, Peace, Religion

“This is a place of peace," Medwyn said, "and therefore not suitable for men, at least, not yet.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 13

Peace

“To Parker Bright, Hannah Black, and other critics of this painting, I say this:
I completely reject your criticism. If only artists of the proper ethnicity can depict violence inflicted on their group, then only writers of the proper ethnicity can write about the same issues, and so on with all the arts. And what goes for ethnicity or race goes for gender: men cannot write about suffering inflicted on women, nor women about suffering inflicted on men. Gays cannot write about straight people and vice versa.
The fact is that we are all human, and we are all capable of sharing, as well as depicting, the pain and suffering of others. I will not allow you to fracture art and literature the way you have fractured politics. Yes, horrible injustices have been visited on minority groups, on women, on gays, and on other marginalized people, but to allow that injustice to be conveyed only by “properly ethnic or gendered artists” is to deny us our common humanity and deprive us of emotional solidarity. No group, whatever its pigmentation or chromosomal constitution, has the exclusive right to create art or literature about their own subgroup. To deny others that right is to censor them.
To those who say this painting has caused them “unnecessary hurt” because it is by a white artist about black pain, I say, “Your own pain about this artwork is gratuitous; I do not take it seriously. It’s the cry of a coddled child who simply wants attention.””

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Insane political correctness: snowflakes urge destruction of Emmett Till painting https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/insane-political-correctness-snowflakes-urge-destruction-of-emmett-till-painting/" April 4, 2017

Women, Pain, People, Art

“The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

1944. Fest, Joachim. Plotting Hitler's Death, p. 236.

World, History, Decision

“When men in relationships have more money, we say they have the power. When women in relationships have more money, we say they are being used.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 218.

Women, Money

“Nothing is so difficult to change as the traditional habits of a free people in regard to such things. Such changes may be easily made in despotic countries like Russia, or in countries where notwithstanding theoretical freedom the government and the police are all powerful as in France… Can you expect that the people of the United Kingdom will cast aside all the names of space and weight and capacity which they learnt from their infancy and all of a sudden adopt an unmeaning jargon of barbarous words representing ideas and things new to their minds. It seems to me to be a dream of pedantic theorists… I see no use however in attempting to Frenchify the English nation, and you may be quite sure that the English nation will not consent to be Frenchified. There are many conceited men who think that they have given an unanswerable argument in favour of any measure they may propose by merely saying that it has been adopted by the French. I own that I am not of that school, and I think the French have much to gain by imitating us than we have to gain by imitating them. The fact is there are a certain set of very vain men like Ewart and Cobden who not finding in things as they are here, the prominence of position to which they aspire, think that they gain a step by oversetting any of our arrangements great or small and by holding up some foreign country as an object of imitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Thomas Milner Gibson (5 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 507.
1860s

People, School, Dreams, Idea

“I have fixed my eyes on the spaces that heaven’s light illuminates, that I may not lay too heavy a strain on the indulgence with which you have accompanied me over the dreary and heartbreaking course by which men have passed to freedom; and because the light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

Freedom, Light, Past, Future

“Get there first with the most men.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

Reported by General Basil W. Duke and Richard Taylor
Often erroneously reported as "Git thar fustest with the most mostest." In The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 272, the phrase he used has also been reported to have been "I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men" and "I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men."
1860s

“Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 44
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

World, Law, Fashion

“Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Life, World, Way

“If a society insists that warfare is the major occupation for the male sex, it is therefore insisting that all male children display bravery and pugnacity. Even if the insistence upon the differential bravery of men and women is not made articulate, the difference in occupation makes this point implicitly. When, however, a society goes further and defines men as brave and women as timorous, when men are forbidden to show fear and women are indulged in the most flagrant display of fear, a more explicit element enters in. Originally two variations of human temperament, a hatred of fear or willingness to display fear, they have been socially translated into inalienable aspects of the personalities of the two sexes. And to that defined sex-personality every child will be educated, if a boy, to suppress fear, if a girl, to show it.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 287

Women, Children, Education, Fear

“By determining law — so far as it is the subject of a specific science of law — as norm, it is delimited against nature; and science of law against natural science. But in addition to legal norms, there are other norms regulating the behavior of men to each other, that is, social norms; and the science of law is therefore not the only discipline directed toward the cognition and description of social norms. There other social norms may be called “morals.” and the discipline directed toward their cognition and description, “ethics.” So far as justice is a postulate of morals, the relationship between justice and law is included in the relationship between morals and law.”

Hans Kelsen book Pure Theory of Law

Pure Theory of Law (revised ed., 1960), 7. Moral Norms as Social Norms

Justice, Law, Behavior, Nature

“All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

William Cowper Prime in The Old House by the River (1853); first misattributed to Hawthorne in Notable Thoughts about Women: A Literary Mosaic (1882) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 239
Misattributed

Love, Life, Fight

“Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.”

James Shirley Cupid and Death

Cupid and Death.

Death

“There is one quality I find in all the artists I admire most – men like Masaccio, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne. I mean a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle of some sort... Great Art is not Perfect. Here the disturbing element comes in. It is instructive to know that Rembrandt copied Mantegna, whose art is the extreme opposite of his own. Why did he do so? Because he was conscious that his own art lacked the classical element. He was aware of the opposite, and that makes him greater.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote in 'Conversations with Henri Moore', J.P. Hodin, in 'The Observer', 24 Nov. 1958
1955 - 1970

Art, Perfection

“More men than I have put men to death, but I am the last man in the world that would take a man's life. Two years ago—even if my own life was at stake—and I am confident, if I thought a man would shoot me—I would give him a chance of keeping his life, and would part with my own; but if I knew that through him innocent persons' lives were at stake, I certainly would have to shoot him if he forced me to do so; but I would want to know that he was really going to take my innocent life.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Sentencing (1880)

Life, Death, World, Confidence

“You don't wage civil war in kid gloves. The Spanish bishops know it so well that they have been obliged to refer to 'regrettable excesses' and 'inevitable abuses'. They seem to think that war is like Shrove Tuesday, that it's a jolly respite, as it were, from social morality, and that men can give themselves up to being cruel just as gay sparks at carnival-time indulge in bottom-pinching! Once the illuminations go out, we must welcome the dear lad home with a smile that's both knowing and fatherly. 'Don't worry, my dear boy. We can none of us resist a little fun sometimes. Think no more about it.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

But, Your Excellencies, this is something more than a little fun!
Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.147

War, Smile, Home, Boy

“The survival of our democracy and the unity and integrity of the nation depend upon the realisation that constitutional morality is no less essential than constitutional legality. Dharma lives in the hearts of public men; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no amendment, can save it.”

Nanabhoy Palkhivala (1920–2002) Indian jurist and economist

Privy Purse case Madhav Rao Jivaji Rao Scindia vs Union of India, (1971) 1 SCC 85 http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/660275/

Law, Democracy, Heart, Dependency

“The great problem of our civilization is still unsolved. We have to account for and grapple with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst, co-existent as it is with the evidence of abundant wealth and teeming prosperity. It is a problem which some men would put aside by reference to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of property…Our object is the elevation of the poor, of the masses of the people—a levelling up of them by which we shall do something to remove the excessive inequality in social life.”

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

Speech on 8 September, 1885.
1880s

Life, People, Law, Problem

“Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence — in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. But men and women, being more highly developed, are immensely more advanced than the infinite number of other beings known to us.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Women, God, Religion, Soul

“For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho’ repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Joseph Huey (6 June 1753); published in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, volume 3, p. 144.
Epistles

God, Children, Travel, Thinking

“Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Sense

“To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 221

Education, Fashion, Thinking

“Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

Essays on Men and Manners (1804)

“I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.”

Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage

Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 15

“These men of the cloth sought reflected glory in glorifying the inhumanity of their sinful flock of hostage takers; but in their uncompassionate hearts, could not find the will to spare a moment to cast a comforting glance at the hapless and innocent hostages who languished but a few yards away in the parliamentary complex. They joined together to desecrate the national motto: Fear God and Honour the Chief; they violated the solemn promise. And their political outriders, far and wide, high and low, military and civilian, hastened to proclaim their support for the newly invented “cause” as defined by army officer Sitiveni Rabuka (1987) and failed businessman George Speight (2000), while occasionally proclaiming not to support the means, but had not the courage to condemn and resist their evil enterprise.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

God, Fear, Courage, Support

“The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

First measure “The Lady Margaret” (pp. 15-16)
Pavane (1968)

Way

“Men are forever doing two things at the same time: acting egoistically and talking moralistically.”

Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) German philosopher

The Tyranny of Hate: The Roots of Antisemitism : A Translation into English of Memsheleth Sadon (1992), p. 25

Time

“How much more forcefully can I say it? The time has come, and it is long overdue, when Christians and conservatives and all men and women who believe in the birthright of freedom must rise up and reclaim America for Jesus Christ.”

James Kennedy (televangelist) (1930–2007) American evangelist

Character & Destiny: A Nation In Search of Its Soul D. James Kennedy, Zondervan Publishing House, 1997, p. 80

Women, Freedom, Time, Christ

“The analogy between management and engineering has the unwholesome effect of taking management one further step away from governance. Engineering, like science, music, and theology, knows no national boundaries, and this is why scientists, artists, and theologians— often to their credit— make statesmen uneasy. Such men and women operate from a different normative base from those who govern. Despite the salience of the NAFTAs, the WTOs, and the EUs of this world, governing remains overwhelmingly the business of nation-states.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

Source: Civil servants and their constitutions, 2002, p. ix

Women, World, Music, Business

“If Nixon is not forced to turn over tapes of his conversations with the ring of men who were conversing on their violations of the law, then liberty will soon be dead in this nation. If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along — not the Congress nor the courts. The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion the law as he sees fit.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Speaking to William O. Douglas on the afternoon of the day he died (9 July 1974) as quoted in The Court Years, 1939-1975 : The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (1980), p. 514
1970s

Law, Fashion, Dead

“Whether in a South African coal mine, on an Alaskan fishing boat, or in the American military, men's protective instinct toward women, and women's protective instinct toward themselves (and children) keeps men more disposable than women. Here's an example of the dynamic at work in the military. At the military's SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other abuse of women lest their sensitivity be used against them in war. We think of women in the military as being safer in part because they are still prohibited from the most dangerous assignments. But this prohibition is just a reflection of the traditional male's instinct to protect women.”

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

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 33.

Women, War, Children, School

“I told my constituents when I ran for office that the most important vote I would ever take would be on sending their men and women — the boys and girls, the young men and women in my state — or anywhere else in the United States — to war. To me, it's an amazing thing, an amazing thing that we would do this so lightly, without any consideration by this august body. To send our young men and women to war without any congressional approval.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Senate floor, 2011-03-30
regarding US participation in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya
2010s

Women, War, Girl, Boy

“Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fools

“The prophet [ Isaiah ]… points out what will be the cause of this change; for he says that hatred, quarrel, and fighting will come to an end, because men will have a true knowledge of God. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters which cover the sea" (Isa. xi. ver. 9) Note it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.11

God, Mountain, Knowledge, Water

“The love of esteem is the life and soul of society; it unites us to one another : I want your approbation, you stand in need of mine. By forsaking the converse of men, we forsake the virtues necessary for society; for when one is alone, one is apt to grow negligent; the world forces you to have a guard over yourself.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Son, 1726, p. 155

Love, Life, World, Soul

“men's hearts ought not to be set against one another; but set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Evil, Heart

“It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

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

The Great Infidels (1881)

World, Chance

“Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cato the Elder
Roman Apophthegms

Age, Evil

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

This is presented as a statement of 1877, as quoted in From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison (2007) by Deborah Headstrom-Page, p. 22.
1800s

Success, Inspirational, Motivational, Wise

“I would be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Sand and Foam (1926)

Dreams

“Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children."”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), p. 213.
Criticism

Women, Children, Age

“Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men
Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days;
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.”

Matthew Arnold Thyrsis

St. 1
Thyrsis (1866)

Change

“If the sewing societies, the avails of whose industry are now expended in supporting and educating young men for the ministry, were to withdraw their contributions to these objects, and give them where they are more needed, to their advancement of their own sex in useful learning, the next generation might furnish sufficient proof, that in intelligence and ability to master the whole circle of sciences, woman is not inferior to man.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Education, Sex, Intelligence, Support

“We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 11

Thinking

“Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Love, Women, War, Hope

“(Woman psychic) In June of 1987, men will begin talking about their feelings; women all over America will be sorry within minutes.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 23

Women, Feeling

“If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 2, p. 8
Leviathan (1651)

People, Fear, Dreams, Dependency

“Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do; they can nowise proceed at once and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery, they were hopeless, helpless.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Truth, Nature

“Men in general are very slow to enter into what is reckoned a new thing; and there seems to be a very universal as well as great reluctance to undergo the drudgery of acquiring information that seems not to be absolutely necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade with North america, Chart V, page 29.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

Universe

“Almost every study of the secret of the successful leader has agreed that the possession of a generous and unusual endowment of physical and nervous energy is essential to personal ascendancy. Those who rise in any marked way above the mass of men have conspicuously more drive, more sheer endurance, greater vigor of body and mind than the average person”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 83; As cited in: Preston J. Beil (1956) Variety store retailing: A text and basic reference book for the multi-billion dollar variety store and popular-priced general merchandise market. p. 90.

Secret, Way, Study, Success

“If you have a government of good laws and bad men, you will have a bad government. For bad men will not be bound by good laws.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).

Law

“Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 30
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Life, God, Help

“In our judgment of men, we are to beware of giving any great importance to occasional acts. By acts of occasional virtue weak men endeavour to redeem themselves in their own estimation, vain men to exalt themselves in that of mankind.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 3. p. 20

“What an illusion Mahamaya has conjured up! Here is this infinite world, and what one claims as his possession will be left behind at death. Still men cannot understand this simple truth.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, 121]

Death, Truth, World, Understanding

“If organized team sports develop managerial skills for a corporate setting, pickup team sports are more like training to be an entrepreneur… Pickup team sports are still about 99% male. That is, this form of preparation to be an entrepreneur is about 99% male socialization. I believe this is one of many contributors to why men who run their own business earn twice what their female counterparts earn.”

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

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 156.

Business, Sport, Training

“Women’s vulnerability confessing their desire to see men as a success object is matched by men’s confession of compulsiveness of sexual desire for women.”

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

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

Women, Success

“Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the [Nore] lightship marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond… [The inward-bound ships] all converge upon the Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated in iron. Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level marsh extends for miles. Away in the far background the land rises, closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in the distance an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

The Nore to Hope Point
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

War, Bird, Water, Distant

“Because men complained less, we made the false assumption that the complaints women experienced were only women’s complaints and, therefore, only women’s problems. Which created the rationale for women’s problems to be solved – or at least addressed – by public policy.”

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

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

Women, Problem, Falseness

“Let Divines, and Philosophers, Statesmen and Patriots unite their endeavours to renovate the Age, by impressing the Minds of Men with the importance of educating their little boys, and girls — of inculcating in the Minds of youth the fear, and Love of the Deity, and universal Phylanthropy; and in subordination to these great principles, the Love of their Country — of instructing them in the Art of self government, without which they never can act a wise part in the Government of Societys great, or small — in short of leading them in the Study, and Practice of the exalted Virtues of the Christian system.”

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

Letter to John Adams (4 October 1790) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/4sdms10.txt

Love, Youth, Age, Education

“The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the republic lives.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Beauty, Art, Flowers, Memory

“Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.”

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

A 58
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook A (1765-1770)

Thinking, Effort

“While they complain about candidates pandering to special-interest groups, 217 years of this republic have shown that deep down people want candidates who strive to be all things to all men. People say they want office-seekers who are candid, frank, straightforward, genuine, who tell the truth even when it hurts. Who are on the up-and-up, guileless, unartful, undesigning, unequivocal. But nobody has won running on that platform, including Lincoln, FDR and Reagan, and you will be no exception. Voters elect only candidates who are deceptive, duplicitous, bluffers, cunning, crafty and Machiavellian. That's because voters want politicians like themselves. The media agrees. So why are you out of step? Thus, you've botched your campaign. You're going to lose by a landslide. I accuse you of being politically pure, clean, pristine, impeccable and untarnished. Your very presence embarrasses the system because you don't play by the historic rules.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Thomas Roeser to Keyes in the Chicago Sun Times.
Miscellaneous

People, Truth, Hurt

“I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Kidnapped

Kidnapped, ch. 14 (1886).

Fools

“How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter VII: The Lamp of Obedience, section 1.

Falseness

“Whenever I had an opportunity to address the people in different parts of our province, I told them clearly that indeed, I was of the opinion that India should not be divided because today in India we have witnessed the result. Thousands and thousands of young and old, children, men, and women were massacred and ruined. But now that the division is an accomplished fact, the dispute is over. " I delivered many speeches against the division of India, but the question is: has anybody listened to me? You may hold any opinion about me, but I am not a man of destruction but of construction. If you study my life, you will find that I devoted it to the welfare of our country. We have proclaimed that if the Government of Pakistan would work for our people and our country the Khudai Khidmatgars would be with them. I repeat that I am not for the destruction of Pakistan. In destruction lies no good. "Neither Hindus nor Muslims, nor the Frontier, not Punjab, Bengal or Sindh stands to gain from it. There is advantage only in construction. I want to tell you categorically I will not support anybody in destruction. If any constructive programme is before you, if you want to do something constructive for our people, not in theory, but in practice, I declare before this House that I and my people are at your service…”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) Indian independence activist

February 1948
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: A True Servant of Humanity by Girdhari Lal Puri pp -188 ? 190

Life, Women, Children, People

“Now such an one for daughter Creon had
As maketh wise men fools and young men mad.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Life and Death of Jason, Book xvii, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Fools, Daughters, Madness

“I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men — they went a dark road, but they were men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God, Knowledge

“Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields; blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And Juss said unto the Queen, "Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords and spears? For know well that these be the ladder's rungs that we of Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we hold over the four corners of the world." She answered, "O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared the land for it and reaped it."”

Eric Rücker Eddison book The Worm Ouroboros

Ch. 33 : Queen Sophonisba in Galing, p. 499 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two39.htm <br class="br">The Worm Ouroboros (1922)

War, World, Thinking, Joy

“Go, then, young men, where glory waits you. The field is the world. Go where the abjects wander, and gather them into the fold of the sanctuary. Go to the lazarettos where the moral lepers herd, and tell them of the healing balm. Go to the haunts of crime, and float a gospel message upon the feculent air. Go wherever there are ignorant to be instructed, timid to be cheered, and helpless to be succored, and stricken to be blessed, and erring to be reclaimed. Go wherever faith can see, or hope can breathe, or love can work, or courage can venture. Go and win the spurs of your spiritual knighthood there.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 131.

Love, World, Faith, Hope

“Jailer: You understand my position, sir, there's nothing I can do; I'm a plain, simple man and just want to keep out of trouble.
More: Oh, Sweet Jesus! These plain, simple men!”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Understanding

“Dear Reichsführer, among 10's of millions of Jews in Europe, there are, I figure, at least 2-3 millions of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labor problem presents us with, I hold the view that those 2-3 millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can however only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate. About a year ago I reported to you that agents of mine have completed the experiments necessary for this purpose. I would like to recall these facts once more. Sterilization, as normally performed on persons with hereditary diseases is here out of the question, because it takes too long and is too expensive. Castration by X-ray however is not only relatively cheap, but can also be performed on many thousands in the shortest time. I think that at this time it is already irrelevant whether the people in question become aware of having been castrated after some weeks or months, once they feel the effects. Should you, Reichsführer, decide to choose this way in the interest of the preservation of labor, then Reichsleiter Bouhler would be prepared to place all physicians and other personnel needed for this work at your disposal. Likewise he requested me to inform you that then I would have to order the apparatus so urgently needed with the greatest speed. Heil Hitler! Yours, Viktor Brack.”

Viktor Brack (1904–1948) SS officer

Letter written to Heinrich Himmler (23 June 1942).

Women, People, Disease, Way

“Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows.”

Benjamin Franklin book Poor Richard's Almanack

Poor Richard's Almanack (1743)
Poor Richard's Almanack

“Before the Treatise, the interest- rate was determined by tastes and objective circumstances, by the persuasibility of income-earners to transfer consumption from the present to the future, and the desire of business men to transfer the means of free enterprise from the future to the present, thus altering the productive possibilities and enlarging the prospective income of the society including themselves.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 162

Business, Future

“There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort … The need of work is in me.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

As quoted in Contemporary Portraits (1920) by Frank Harris, p. 263

Life, Health, Birth, Happiness

“The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem — that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday?"”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To An Ungentle Critic"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

Pain, Feeling, Reading

“For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!—We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world—!”

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

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

Life, God, People, World

“When does a state of culture prevail? When the men of a community are steadily working for the production of single great men. From this highest aim all the others follow. And what state is farthest removed from a state of culture? That in which men energetically and with united forces resist the appearance of great men, partly by preventing the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly by obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears amongst them. Such a state is more remote from culture than that of sheer barbarism.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 12

Communication, Appearance

“I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

This has sometimes been paraphrased: "The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them."
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 15.

Life, Dreams, Understanding

“Children are like men, the experience of others does not help them.”

Alphonse Daudet book Jack

Les enfants sont comme les hommes, l'expérience d'autrui ne leur sert pas.
Jack: mœurs contemporaines (1876; repr. Paris: E. Dentu, 1877); Laura Ensor (trans.) Jack (London: Dent, 1896) vol. 1, p. 83.

Children, Help

“It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives…”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Castle of the Devil" (1968)

World, Evil

“That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Way, Time

Quotes about men page 76

Quotes about men
page 76