Quotes about man
page 4

“A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Leonard Bernstein, statement of 1953, quoted in A Wonderful Life : 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit (2006) by Cyrus M. Copeland, p. 190

Future, Night

“Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Quoted in Vine Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2003, cited to Virginia Armstrong, I have spoken; American history through the voices of the Indians. Chicago, Sage Books, 1971.

Heart

“Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.”

Protagoras (-486–-411 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

As quoted in Theaetetus by Plato section 152a

“A fool's mind is at the mercy of his tongue and a wise man's tongue is under the control of his mind.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Fools

“I hope that Cezanne will still be here and that he will join us, but he is so shy, so afraid of meeting new people, that I am afraid that he might let us down, even though he wants very much to meet you. How sad it is that this man hasn't had more patronage in his life! This is a true artist who has come to doubt himself far too much. He needs to be cheered up, so e was quote touched by your article.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter from Giverny to Gustave Geffroy, 23 November 1894; as cited in: P. Michael Doran (2001), ‎Art Conversations with Cézanne, p. 3
1890 - 1900

Life, People, Sadness, Hope

“Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Animals

“Rub one out like a man, it's the champagne of victory.”

Bill Burr (1968) American actor, comedian and a celebrity podcaster

You People Are All the Same (2012)

Victory

“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)

Death

“Let me tell you one thing. There is great complexity in this creation. The Master does one thing through one man and another thing through another person. Oh, it is so inscrutable!”

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

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 312]

Personality

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell Misattributed

Life, Men, Children, World

“Through systematic terror, through indoctrination, through systematic manipulation of stimulus, reward, and punishment, we can today break man and convert him into brute animal… The first step toward survival is therefore to make government legitimate again by attempting to deprive it of these powers… by international action to ban such powers.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 258

Animals

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Attributed to Rodin in H. Read (1964), as cited in: Karl H. Pfenninger, ‎Valerie R. Shubik, ‎Bruce Adolphe (2001). The Origins of Creativity. p. 50
1950s-1990s

Love, Hope

“I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on equaliy, From a letter to General Du Preez, Commissioner of Prisons, Written on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa (12 July 1976). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes 1970s

Life

“If Smith was a black man, I would say that he was the best Prime Minister that Zimbabwe ever had.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Morgan Tsvangirai, Leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, 1999[citation needed]
About

“Bring down a man and be the man”

E.M.S (1995) Nigerian rapper, singer and record producer

88 Bars (2012)

“A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Utopia and Violence (1947)

Decision, Success

“Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

L'homme est ainsi bâti: Quand un sujet l'enflamme
L'impossibilité disparaît à son âme.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 25.
Fables (1668–1679)

Soul

“Yo, this one here, goes out to all my players out there man, you know.”

Akon (1973) singer

Lonely
Song lyrics, Trouble (2004)

“I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing- truth that their enemies were the enemies of magna- nimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Letters on Polish Affairs (1922)
Source: https://archive.org/stream/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft_djvu.txt

Love, Truth, Light, Passion

“By Silence, the discretion of a man is known: and a fool, keeping Silence, seemeth to be wise.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

The Sayings of the Wise (1555)

Fools, Silence

“It is a grand thing to see a man thoroughly possessed with one master-passion. Such a man is sure to be strong, and if the master-principle be excellent, he is sure to be excellent, too.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Soul-Winner (1895)

Strong, Passion

“Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later, they didn't know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.”

Magic Johnson (1959) American basketball player

Then & Now: Magic Johnson http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/cnn25.tan.johnson/index.html

World, Education, Sport, Help

“There are no such things as incurable, there are only things for which man has not found a cure.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

Speech (30 April 1954)

“Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Dead

“And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you—
it's born with us the day that we are born.”

Homér Iliad

VI. 488–489 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Fate

“Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Epilogue, p. 306.
The Tao of Physics (1975)

Understanding, Science

“…the relatively unconscious man driven by his natural impulses because, imprisoned in his familiar world, he clings to the commonplace, the obvious, the probable, the collectively valid, using for his motto: 'Thinking is difficult. Therefore, let the herd pronounce judgement.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Frequently misquoted as "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge" and close variants.
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (1959), C.G. Jung, R.F.C. Hull (translator) (Princeton Press, 1979, ISBN 9780691018225

World, Nature, Thinking

“When a man sought knowledge, it would not be long before it could be seen in his humbleness, his sight, upon his tongue and his hands, in his prayer, in his speech and in his disinterest (zuhd) in worldly allurements. And a man would acquire a portion of knowledge and put it into practice, and it would be better for him than the world and all it contains – if he owned it he would give it in exchange for the hereafter.”

Hasan al-Basri (642–728) Iranian Sufi Saint

Quoted in Ibn Al-Mubârak, Al-Zuhd wa Al-Raqâ`iq Vol.1 p. 156.

World, Knowledge

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max&#8209; Planck&#8209; Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Life, Intelligence, Study, Science

“It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.”

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

Xenophanes, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry book Flight to Arras

Les pierres du chantier ne sont en vrac qu’en apparence, s’il est, perdu dans le chantier, un homme, serait-il seul, qui pense cathédrale.
Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)

“Successive technological revolutions have immeasurably widened the psychological gap between generations. With some reason, perhaps, the man of the age of electricity and of the airplane feels himself removed from his masters.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

The Historian's Craft, pg.36

Age, Feeling, Success

“I ask, on this bondless land
Who rules over man's destiny?”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Changsha (1925)
Context: Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
Xiang flowing northward;
I see a thousand hills crimsoned through
By their serried woods deep-dyed,
And a hundred barges vying
Over crystal blue waters.
Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide under the shallow water;
Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this bondless land
Who rules over man's destiny?

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Children, Hope

“Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Context: Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage! It is well, indeed, that some should live in closed studies with the paintings and the books of yesterday — such devoted students serve Art in their own way. But the fresh-air world will ever want new forms. We shall not get them without faith enough to risk the old! The good will live, the bad will die; and tomorrow only can tell us which is which!

Courage, Change

“Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you!”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

The Great Dictator (1940), The Barber's speech
Context: I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
[Cheers]
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.

Men, God, Fight

“Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, p. 223; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote.
Disputed
Context: Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist? Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering into my sheer joy in all that is lovely — the sense of a Creator whom innocent creation worships with its beauty. Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot. And so I must try to throw myself on the side of the victor.

Hate, Spring

“The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Interview in The Voice of Ethiopia (5 April 1948).
Context: The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement. When this comes to be realized man's journey toward higher and more lasting values will show more marked progress while the evil in him recedes into the background. Knowing that material and spiritual progress are essential to man, we must ceaselessly work for the equal attainment of both. Only then shall we be able to acquire that absolute inner calm so necessary to our well-being.
It is only when a people strike an even balance between scientific progress and spiritual and moral advancement that it can be said to possess a wholly perfect and complete personality and not a lopsided one.

Religion, Science, Evil

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Life, Fate, Way, Suffering

“Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

Men, Hell, Fight

“Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Literature and Ethics, entry for 1901
Journals 1889-1949

Men

“Bestow rewards without respect to customary practice; publish orders without respect to precedent. Thus you may employ the entire army as you would one man.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

“Faith cannot be given to man.Faith arises in a man and increases”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)
Context: Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.

Faith

“Here profits not
To tell the whole truth with clear face unveiled.
Often is man's best wisdom to be silent.”

Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet

οὔ τοι ἅπασα κερδίων
φαίνοισα πρόσωπον ἀλάθει᾽ ἀτρεκής·
καὶ τὸ σιγᾶν πολλάκις ἐστὶ σοφώτατον ἀνθρώπῳ νοῆσαι.
Nemean 5, line 16-8; page 222. (483 BC?)

Wisdom, Truth

“Man is sick and nations have gone mad.
You would not even tolerate for one moment the conduct in an individual that is commonplace in the acts of some nations. You would lock up such a person.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"Times Must Change" in Ability # 179 (20 March 1966).

Madness

“If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 2, Ch. 173.
The Histories

Madness

“A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

15
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

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."

Love, Life, Wisdom, Truth

“I think it's your own choice if you turn from an angry young man to a bitter, old bastard.”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

Thinking

“I violate the Prohibition law, sure, Who doesn't? The only difference is that I take more chances than the man who drinks a cocktail before dinner and a flock of highballs after it.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Law, Drink, Chance

“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

This quote was instead first mentioned in a 1931 book titled “Since Calvary: An Interpretation of Christian History” by the comparative religion specialist Lewis Browne.
Disputed

Religion, Cats

“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Strength to Love, Chapter 7
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)

“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull Attributed quotes

Making love

“The world does not consist of subjects and objects, the “subject” and the “object” are metaphysical abstractions of the single and indivisible Wholeness. Man’s finite knowledge separates the Whole into parts and studies fragmentarily the beings. The Wholeness is manifested in multiple forms and each form encapsulates the Wholeness.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: Cosmology, philosophy and physics

“All beings and things, visible and invisible are interrelated and inseparable, are the same and different forms of open wholeness. The possibility of survival, passing through a generous and friendly relationship with the other man, with the other beings, the planet as a whole, the stars and the whole universe.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: Universal consciousness

“To the well-fed it seems cowardly to complain of tight boots, because the well-fed live in a different world-a world where, if your boots are tight, you can change them; their minds are not warped by petty discomfort. But below a certain income the petty crowds the large out of existence; one's preoccupation is not with art or religion, but with bad food, hard beds, drudgery and the sack. Serenity is impossible to a poor man in a cold country and even his active thoughts will go in more or less sterile complaint.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: Review of Hunger and Love by Lionel Britton, in The Adelphi (April 1931)

Bad luck, World, Religion, Food

“Being an Aryan, in or out of prison, is a lifelong struggle of "becoming," of becoming a higher man or woman.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

“Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Death, Happiness

“Man: a being in search of meaning.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

“The wise man has always treated religions with respect, not adoration nor blind following alone. He's more logical rather than emotional.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion

“: A philosopher is a man in the street who speaks the same street language. He has to speak from personal experience and try to make simple spirits understand his way of life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Way, Understanding, Personality

“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
General

Life, Faith, Study, Time

“Bedevil the devil and devil be dammed. I fear no devil and bow to no man.

- Adam Black”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Beyond the Highland Mist

Fear

“The west need someone to tell the man who walks around with the biggest stick in the world, that that stick can`t bring down God`s house.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

God, World, Housing

“A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 16
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Strong

“Man wants three things; life, knowledge, and love.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Love, Life, Knowledge

“If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Men, God, Forgiveness, Sleep

“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Reagan reportedly displayed a plaque with this proverbial aphorism on his Oval Office desk (Michael Reagan, The New Reagan Revolution (2010), p. 177). Harry S. Truman is reported to have repeated versions of the aphorism on several occasions. This exact wording was in wide circulation in the 1960s, and the earliest known variant has been attributed to Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893).
Misattributed

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Source: Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Not found in Twain's works, this was attributed to him in Reader's Digest (September 1939): no prior attribution known. Mark Twain’s father died when Twain was eleven years old.
Disputed
Variant: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Boy, Learning, Father's Day, For Father

“Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Life, Fear, Loneliness

“All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Preface, 2nd edition (22 July 1848)
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Context: I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

Women, Men, Loss, Reading

“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

As quoted in Art of Communicating Ideas (1952) by William Joseph Grace, p. 389
Disputed

Education, School, Cars, Universe

“The distinguishing mark of man is the, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“My teacher said once that every man faces seven enemies in his lifetime. Sickness, hunger, betrayal, envy, greed, old age, and then death…”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

Death, Hunger, Age, Teachers

“I like the moment when I break a man's ego”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, Death, God

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Actually said by Napoleon Hill, Stone later added the line "...with P.M.A." (Positive Mental Attitude) to the end of this quote.
Misattributed
Variant: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Motivational, Deep, Inspirational, Attitude

“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Fools, Tree

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

“Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work… a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director

Men, Feeling, Passion

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible.
Source: East of Eden

Love, Strong, Heart

“People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 400

Life, People, Books, Change

“If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Must I go bound while you go free
Must I love a manwho doesn't love me
Must I be born with so little art
As to love a man who'll break my Heart”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love, Art, Heart

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Suffering, Animals

“The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Love, Truth

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

As quoted in "Wisdom of a forefather" https://web.archive.org/web/20100716212616/http://www.today.colostate.edu/story.aspx?id=546 (11 February 2009), Colorado State University. Posthumous attributions