Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
"Security" (1951); excerpted in Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008), page 15
1950s
Quotes about man page 3
“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician
“The first thing a man will do for his ideal is lie”
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian economist
Source: History of Economic Analysis, p. 43
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Variant: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath
Reply, according to Dr. Felix T. Smith of Stanford Research Institute, to a physicist friend who had said "I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics," as quoted in The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (1979) by Gary Zukav, Bantam Books, p. 208, footnote.
Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher
Source: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception
“I have to believe much in God because I have lost my faith in man.”
José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere
Source: Noli Me Tángere
“He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.”
Isabel Allende book Inés of My Soul
Source: Inés of My Soul
“The man with the greatest soul will always face the greatest war with the low minded person.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author
Source: Carlos Castaneda (1971) Separate Reality: Conversations With Don Juan. p. 85; As cited in: Eugene Dupuis (2001) Time Shift: Managing Time to Create a Life You Love. Ch. 5: Self Management
William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads
Stanza 2.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Context: These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
“Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer
Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
“Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer
Letter to Leopold Mozart (11 September 1778), from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart by Georg Knepler (1991), trans. J. Bradford Robinson [Cambridge University Press, 1994, ], p. 12.
Variant: A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.
“A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong.”
Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist
“The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning
Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher
Source: Emile or On Education
“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.”
Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Zimbabwe, from the album Survival (1979)
Song lyrics
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
Source: The Success Journey: The Process of Living Your Dreams
“No empty handed man can lure a bird”
Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales
Source: The Canterbury Tales
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Address to the court in People v. Lloyd (1920)
“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.”
Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer
“A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.”
Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker
Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician
Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-U2-cAUMM
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"
volume I, chapter VI: "The Voyage", page 266 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=284&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter to sister Susan Elizabeth Darwin (4 August 1836) <br class="br">The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887) <br class="br">Source: The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin
Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author
Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)
“That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon
Words said when Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon (20 July 1969) One Small Step, transcript of Apollo 11 Moon landing https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11.step.html. In the actual sound recordings he apparently fails to say "a" before "man" and says: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This was generally considered by many to simply be an error of omission on his part. Armstrong long insisted he did say "a man" but that it was inaudible. Prior to new evidence supporting his claim, he stated a preference for the "a" to appear in parentheses when the quote is written. The debate continues on the matter, as "Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon" at BBC News (3 June 2009) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8081817.stm reports that more recent analysis by linguist John Olsson and author Chris Riley with higher quality recordings indicates that he did not say "a". <br class="br">Variant: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
“The young man who joins a political party is a traitor to his generation and to his race.”
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics
“LIFE + DESIRE = MAN; LIFE – DESIRE = GOD.”
Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru
Interview with R.K. Karanjia for Blitz magazine (1976)
“[N]o man hates God without first hating himself.”
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=ho40AAAAMAAJ&q=%22No+man+hates+God+without+first+hating+himself%22&pg=PA11#v=onepage
“That soul that can
Be honest is the only perfect man.”
John Fletcher The Honest Man's Fortune
Epilogue. Compare: "An honest man's the noblest work of God", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 248.
The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647)
Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period
Book 4; Universal Love I
Mozi
Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man
Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory
from Non-resistance or struggle http://tsiolkovsky.org/en/the-cosmic-philosophy/non-resistance-or-struggle-1935/ -- a manuscript written in 1935
Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity
Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), pp. 101-102
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
Richard Kuklinski (1935–2006) American contract killer
“Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Fact and Fiction (1961), Part IV, Ch. 10: "Can War Be Abolished?", p. 276
1960s
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806) French physicist
as quoted by [C. Stewart Gillmor, Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-century France, Princeton University Press, 1971, 069108095X, 255-261]
Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader
The Way of God's Will Chapter 1-5. Tradition, Official Business, and Responsibility http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-05.htm Translated 1980.
“Even a most evil man is better than the devil!”
Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer
Source: A Companion to Jan Hus (2015), pp. 201-202; Jan Hus in Booklet against the Cook-priest in response to the rival priest who swore that Hus is worse than any devil.
Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader
To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer
As quoted in NPR obituary http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/26/507022497/vera-rubin-who-confirmed-existence-of-dark-matter-dies-at-88
“No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.”
Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist
Max Müller, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood
Misattributed
Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) German general
To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster
As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie, p. 26
Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer
Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).
“Anxiety increases in direct ratio and proportion as man departs from God.”
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 2, p. 19
“There is a century-old saying, "The dollar votes more times than the man."”
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 13, p. 222
“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet
Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)
Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist
From a speech (1933)
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Hays translation
Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee. What then can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just? For instance, if a man should stand by a limpid pure spring, and curse it, the spring never ceases sending up potable water; and if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be at all polluted. How then shalt thou possess a perpetual fountain? By forming thyself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity and modesty.
VIII, 51
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician
Part I : The Child's Part in World Reconstruction, p. 4
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
“Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.”
Liberemus diuturna cura populum Romanum, quando mortem senis exspectare longum censent. (Latin, not original language)
Hannibal (-247–-183 BC) military commander of Carthage during the Second Punic War
Last words according to Livy "ab urbe condita", Book XXXIX, 51.