Quotes about men
page 81

George W. Bush photo

“Newton was a genius, but not because of the superior computational power of his brain. Newton's genius was, on the contrary, his ability to simplify, idealize, and streamline the world so that it became, in some measure, tractable to the brains of perfectly ordinary men.”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Source: Introduction to General Systems Thinking, 1975, p. 12; Cited in: Nawaz Sharif, Pakorn Adulbhan (1978) Systems models for decision making. p. 38

Anbumani Ramadoss photo

“Section 377 of IPC, which criminalizes men who have sex with men, must go.”

Anbumani Ramadoss (1968) Indian politician

On a law that criminalise homosexuality in India, as quoted in " Legalise homosexuality: Ramadoss http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Legalise-homosexuality-Ramadoss/articleshow/3342815.cms?referral=PM", The Times of India (9 August 2008)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.

Wu Den-yih photo

“We should rebuild a just and harmonious society, where amicability exists between labor and capital, the younger and older generations, men and women, as well as concerned parties in the recent debates about legalizing same-sex marriage.”

Wu Den-yih (1948) Taiwanese politician

Wu Den-yih (2017) cited in: " Wu pledges just governance if elected http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/01/10/2003662833" in Taipei Times, 10 January 2017.

Charles Dickens photo
Warren Farrell photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Neil Strauss photo
Anne Rice photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3895. Poor men seek meat for their Stomach; rich Men Stomach for their Meat.”

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

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1735) : The poor man must walk to get meat for his stomach, the rich man to get a stomach to his meat.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

John Quincy Adams photo

“The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar instutitions is to deny the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that he has inalienable rights.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

As quoted in letter to the citizens of the twelfth congressional district (29 June 1839), The Hingham Patriot, MA. As quoted in Thomas Huges Rare and Early Newspaper catalog, No. 141
Letter to the 12th Congressional District (1839)

Robert Benchley photo
Georg Brandes photo
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne photo

“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) British Whig statesman

W. M. Torrens Memoirs of William Lamb, Second Viscount Melbourne (1890), p. 234
Attributed

Franz Marc photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Margaret Mead photo
Plutarch photo

“When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

John Ruysbroeck photo
Charles Dickens photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“That the gods superintend all the affairs of men, and that there are such beings as dæmons.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Plato, 42.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 3: Plato

George Mason photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Warren Farrell photo
John Barrowman photo

“I would love to lecture to women on men. I'd tell them everything about men: gay, straight, bi, how we're all the same, how we're all bastards.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

What I know about men, Morwenna Ferrier, Sunday September 7 2008, Sunday September 7 2008, The Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2008/sep/07/women.relationships1,

John Ruskin photo
Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Meher Baba photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de' Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped the shame which ought to cover her name… Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine, the two Balafrés, and the two Condés, against the queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking fire of the Calvinist press.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

En France, et dans la partie la plus grave de l'histoire moderne, aucune femme, si ce n'est Brunehault ou Frédégonde, n'a plus souffert des erreurs populaires que Catherine de Médicis; tandis que Marie de Médicis, dont toutes les actions on été préjudiciables à la France, échappe à la honte qui devrait couvrir son nom... Catherine de Médicis, au contraire, a sauvé la couronne de France; elle a maintenu l'authorité royale dans des des circonstances au milieur desquelles plus d'un grand prince aurait succombé.Ayant en tête des factieux et des ambitions comme celles des Guise et de la maison de Bourbon, des hommes commes les deux cardinaux de Lorraine et comme les deux Balafrés, les deux princes de Condé, la reine Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, le connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, les Coligny, Théodore de Bèze, il lui a fallu déployer les plus rares qualités, les plus précieux dons de l'homme d'État, sous le feu des railleries de la presse calviniste.
About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Introduction

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Walter Pater photo

“The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

On the Mona Lisa, in Leonardo da Vinci
The Renaissance http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-1.html (1873)

James Frazer photo

“Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves there are men who prefer honour to life.”

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 24, The Killing of the Divine King.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Rebecca Latimer Felton photo
David Hume photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo
Alain Finkielkraut photo

“The men who control the CIA are of an older, conservative generation which has kept the agency fifteen or twenty years behind the progress of the nation at large.”

John Stockwell (1937) American activist

Commenting on discrimination in the CIA
In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story, "CIA people policies"; ISBN 0393057054

Henry Miller photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Everett Dean Martin photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Harriet Harman photo

“I don’t agree with all-male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have men-only leadership.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

In a newspaper interview http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6736504.ece, 2 August, 2009.

Daniel Defoe photo

“All men would be tyrants if they could.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Jure divino: a satyre, Introduction, l. 2 (1706).

Charles Babbage photo
Clement Attlee photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Susan B. Anthony photo
George Washington Plunkitt photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude: a city should not merely draw men together in many varied activities, but should permit each person to find, near at hand, moments of seclusion and peace.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

"Planning for the Phases of Life" http://books.google.com/books?id=JypxP4R4cogC&q=%22One+of+the+marks+of+maturity+is+the+need+for%22+%22a+city+should+not+merely+draw+men+together+in+many+varied+activities+but+should+permit+each+person+to+find+near+at+hand+moments+of+seclusion+and+peace%22&pPA40#v=onepage, The Urban Prospect: Essays (1968)

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
George William Curtis photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Honorable things, not secretive things, are sought by good men.”
Honesta enim bonis viris, non occulta quaeruntur.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, section 38
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

Anthony Burgess photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo

“All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men — more so, if possible.”

"On Vanity and Vanities".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Amir Taheri photo

“Poets, essayists, chroniclers, wags, and wise men write often about death but have rarely seem it. Physicians and nurses, who see it often, rarely write about it.”

Sherwin B. Nuland (1930–2014) American surgeon

[How we die: reflections on life's final chapter, Vintage, 1995, Random House, 1995, 8, https://books.google.com/books?id=ffj03ghdnqwC&pg=PA8]
How We Die (1994)

“The world of art was less fortunate. Many of the younger men barely lived through the first flush of youth. Destroying Death is the worst enemy to the arts.”

Wynford Dewhurst (1864–1941) British artist

Source: Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. (1904), p. 1.

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead photo

“It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Statement of 1925, as quoted in Britain between the Wars (1955) by C. L. Mowat, p. 300.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him; teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure,—among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;—not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should have something to speak!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Christopher A. Wray photo
Warren Farrell photo
David Foster Wallace photo
William Trufant Foster photo
Vilfredo Pareto photo

“This bow I held had killed many men, and it had power, dread power, in its ebony stock.”

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

Ray Comfort photo
Warren Farrell photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Warren Farrell photo
Alex Steffen photo
Tom Hanks photo
Antonio Cocchi photo
Manis Friedman photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. …agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen. And this is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, "Love your enemy." And it’s significant that he does not say, "Like your enemy." Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me. I don’t like what they say about me and other people. I don’t like their attitudes. I don’t like some of the things they’re doing. I don’t like them. But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.

Naomi Wolf photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“If the economy of today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase if that were necessary.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)" (14 December 1962)<!-- Public Papers of the President: John F. Kennedy, 1962 -->
1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)

Mitch Albom photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
African Spir photo
George Santayana photo

“It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society, Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal

Warren Farrell photo
Paul Harvey photo