“Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.”
Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
Misattributed
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Euripidés 116
ancient Athenian playwright -480–-406 BCRelated quotes
“As a rule it is circumstances that make men.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.”
Book VI, Chapter 7.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)
“When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.”
The Freeholder, no. 42.
“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves.”
Source: As a Man Thinketh
The Dominant Idea (1910)
Context: Let us have Men, Men who will say a word to their souls and keep it — keep it not when it is easy, but keep it when it is hard — keep it when the storm roars and there is a white-streaked sky and blue thunder before, and one's eyes are blinded and one's ears deafened with the war of opposing things; and keep it under the long leaden sky and the gray dreariness that never lifts. Hold unto the last: that is what it means to have a Dominant Idea, which Circumstance cannot break. And such men make and unmake Circumstance.
“Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.”
Quoted in the Congressional Record, 11 December 1971 http://books.google.com/books?id=ltuwtwQcKHwC&q=%22There+are+no+great+men+there+are%22+%22only+great+challenges+which+ordinary+men+like+you+and+me+are++forced+by+circumstances+to+meet%22&pg=PA46480#v=onepage.