“What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.”

Lucretia, Part II, Chapter XII
Context: The most useless creature that ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 8, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour." by Edward Bulwer-Lytton?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton 31
English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician 1803–1873

Related quotes

Helen Fisher quote: “Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.”
Helen Fisher photo

“Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.”

Helen Fisher (1947) Canadian anthropologist

Source: Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“Some men work to maintain others who labour not. That is unjust.”

Leon MacLaren (1910–1994) British philosopher

Leon MacLaren, Justice.

Malcolm Gladwell photo

“Achievement is talent plus preparation.”

Outliers: The Story of Success
Variant: Achievement is talent plus preparation

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

Eric Hoffer photo

“Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Journal entry (28 March 1959)
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (1969)
Context: The significant point is that people unfit for freedom — who cannot do much with it — are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have-not" type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power.
Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: to have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.
To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.

Richard Stallman photo

“If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

Hugo Black photo

“It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

James Madison Lecture at the New York University School of Law (February 17, 1960).

William Golding photo

“Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world. They may move men to speak to each other because some of those words somewhere express not just what the writer is thinking but what a huge segment of the world is thinking.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Nobel prize lecture (1983)
Context: Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world. They may move men to speak to each other because some of those words somewhere express not just what the writer is thinking but what a huge segment of the world is thinking. They may allow man to speak to man, the man in the street to speak to his fellow until a ripple becomes a tide running through every nation — of commonsense, of simple healthy caution, a tide that rulers and negotiators cannot ignore so that nation does truly speak unto nation. Then there is hope that we may learn to be temperate, provident, taking no more from nature's treasury than is our due. It may be by books, stories, poetry, lectures we who have the ear of mankind can move man a little nearer the perilous safety of a warless and provident world. It cannot be done by the mechanical constructs of overt propaganda. I cannot do it myself, cannot now create stories which would help to make man aware of what he is doing; but there are others who can, many others. There always have been. We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is.
For we are a marvel of creation. I think in particular of one of the most extraordinary women, dead now these five hundred years, Juliana of Norwich. She was caught up in the spirit and shown a thing that might lie in the palm of her hand and in the bigness of a nut. She was told it was the world. She was told of the strange and wonderful and awful things that would happen there. At the last, a voice told her that all things should be well and all manner of things should be well and all things should be very well.
Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.

Thomas Paine photo

“Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you're willing to practice, you can do.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

The Joy of Painting, "Meadow Lake" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARWowi0QXI&feature=youtu.be&t=13m4s (Season 2, Episode 1)

Related topics