Quotes about man
page 69

Viktor Schauberger photo

“Wherever we look the dreadful disintegration of the bridges of life, the capillaries and the bodies they have created, is evident, which has been caused by the mechanical and mindless work of man, who has torn away the soul from the Earth's blood - water. The more the engineer endeavors to channel water, of whose spirit and nature he is today still ignorant, by the shortest and straightest route to the sea, the more the flow of water weighs into the bends, the longer its path and the worse the water will become. The spreading of the most terrible disease of all, of cancer, is the necessary consequence of such unnatural regulatory works. These mistaken activities - our work - must legitimately lead to increasingly widespread unemployment, because our present methods of working, which have a purely mechanical basis, are already destroying not only all of wise Nature's formative processes, but first and foremost the growth of the vegetation itself, which is being destroyed even as it grows. The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism - Earth - is the direct result of modern forestry practices. The pulse-beat of the Earth was factually arrested by the modern timber production industry. Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests. The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed. Ultimately, due to a law which functions with awesome constancy, it will slowly but surely come around to our turn. Our accustomed way of thinking in many ways, and perhaps even without exception, is opposed to the true workings of Nature. Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is carried out correctly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester photo
Moses Hess photo
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“She tried to cry out: 'Will you, cruel man,
leave me alone here?' Pain choked off her cry,
and in her heart the plaintive words began
to echo in a yet more bitter sigh.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Volea gridar: dove, o crudel, me sola
Lasci? ma il varco al suon chiuse il dolore:
Sicchè tornò la flebile parola
Più amara indietro a rimbombar sul core.
Canto XVI, stanza 36 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Reflections on the Psalms (1958), p. 73

Bertolt Brecht photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society annual meeting, New York City (May 1853)
1850s

Jane Austen photo
Gaston Bachelard photo

“Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie" (1938)

Hermann Hesse photo
Joseph Beuys photo

“He [ Marcel Duchamp ] entered this object [the 'Urinal' ready-made] into the museum and noticed that its transportation from one place to another made it into art. But he failed to draw the clear and simple conclusion that every man is an artist.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

as quoted in Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, by Victoria Walters, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 206
Quotes after 1984, posthumous published

“So do not speak to me of souls when you have never seen one, man.”

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 6 (p. 63)

Robert Silverberg photo

“Man cannot pretend to be higher in ethics, spirituality, advancement, or civilization than other creatures and at the same time live by lower standards than the vulture or hyena … The Pillars of Ahimsa indisputably represent the clearest, surest path out of the jungle, and toward the attainment of that highly desirable goal.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

Out of the Jungle (1967); as quoted in Victoria Moran, Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1985), p. 32.

Horace Greeley photo

“One of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City… No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

As quoted in New York Tribune (28 February 1860).
1860s

Ed Wynn photo

“A comedian is not a man who opens a funny door. He opens a door funny.”

Ed Wynn (1886–1966) American actor

Hedda Hooper, November 1 1960, “Comic Ed Wynn, Winning Still, Discusses Craft”, Buffalo (NY) Courier-Express, pg. 6, col. 1. Wynn was paraphrasing Fred Allen. “A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny”, Barry Popik, November 10, 2015, January 7, 2017 http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_comic_says_funny_things/,

Toshio Shiratori photo

“Japan's true aim was to drive the white man out of Asia.”

Toshio Shiratori (1887–1949) Japanese politician

Quoted in "Race War" - Page 82 - by Gerald Horne.

Jimmy Buffett photo

“As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man,
I have chalked up many a mile.
Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks,
And I've learned much from both of their styles.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Son of a Son of a Sailor
Song lyrics, Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Alexander Maclaren photo

“Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 68.

Joseph Gurney Cannon photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Thiruvalluvar photo
Horatio Nelson photo

“The bravest man feels an anxiety 'circa praecordia' as he enters the battle; but he dreads disgrace yet more.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain, Volume 2. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1897, p. 52; attributed by Mahan to Locker's Greenwich Gallery article "Torrington".
1800s

Abd al-Bari Atwan photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 14

“A Ku Klux Klan member would be mortified to learn that he was actually a Black man. Many people’s reaction to learning that they are actually animals, or actually apes, is the same.”

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 156

John Dryden photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Punk :"I am the one man in the world who can shoulder the burden of ending the streak"”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

March 18, 2013
WWE Raw

William Cowper photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Austen Henry Layard photo

“I have always believed that successes would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.”

Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894) British politician (1817–1894)

Speech in Parliament (January 15, 1855), reported in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077; this can be contrasted witho Sydney Smith's statement "The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other" in Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1806).

Maya Angelou photo
Martin Amis photo
Gay Talese photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

As quoted in George Bernard Shaw, his life and works: a critical biography (authorised), Archibald Henderson, Stewart & Kidd (1911), Chapter VII (The Art Critic), pp. 201-202
1910s

Thomas Hobbes photo
Louis Brandeis photo
Averroes photo
Madonna photo
Georg Simmel photo
Paul Tillich photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Walter Benjamin photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“Now you play the loving woman;
I'll play the faithful man.
But just don't look too close into the palm of my hand.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Brilliant Disguise"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“One man can make a difference and every man should try.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Written on a card for an exhibit which travelled around the US when the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston was first opening (1979), quoted in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) edited by Suzy Platt

Max Frisch photo
Henry Adams photo

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Warren Farrell photo
Annie Besant photo

“Yoga is a matter of the Spirit and not of the intellect. For just as water will find its way through every obstruction, in order to rise to the level of its source, so does the spirit in man strive upwards ever towards the source whence it came.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Yoga: The Hatha Yoga and the Raja Yoga http://books.google.co.in/books?id=2sDu6Xmkh2cC&printsec=frontcover, p. backcover

Martin Harris photo

“BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY DAVID WHITMER MARTIN HARRIS”

Martin Harris (1783–1875) Book of Mormon witness

Book of Mormon, 1830 Edition, p. 585 (1830)

Susan Cooper photo
Clint Eastwood photo
Tim Powers photo

“How old are you, Brian? You ought to know by now that something always breaks up love affairs unless both parties are willing to compromise themselves. And that compromising is harder to do the older and less flexible and more independent you are. It just isn’t in you, Brian. You could no more get married now than you could become a priest, or a sculptor, or a greengrocer.”
Duffy opened his mouth to voice angry denials, then one corner turned up and he closed it. “Damn you,” he said wryly. “Then why do I want to, half the time?”
Aurelianus shrugged. “It’s the nature of the species. There’s a part of a man’s mind that can only relax and go to sleep when he’s with a woman, and that part gets tired of always being tensely awake. It gives orders in so loud a voice that it often drowns out the other components. But when the loud one is asleep at last, the others regain control and chart a new course.” He grinned. “No equilibrium is possible. If you don’t want to put up with the constant seesawing, you must either starve the logical components or bind, gag and lock away in a cellar that one insistent one.”
Duffy grimaced and drank some more brandy. “I’m used to the rocking, and I was never one to get motion-sick,” he said. “I’ll stay on the seesaw.”

Aurelianus bowed. “You have that option, sir.”
Source: The Drawing of the Dark (1979), Chapter 18 (p. 247)

Theognis of Megara photo

“One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are few.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 115.

Warren Farrell photo
Herbert Beerbohm Tree photo

“Every man is a potential genius until he does something.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Page 110.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

Willem de Kooning photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Warren G. Harding photo

“The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech delivered in Birmingham, Alabama, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 27 October 1921, p. 2.
1920s

Adam Smith photo

“A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands,…”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter I, p. 313 (see opportunity cost).

John Rupert Firth photo

“The phonetic animal par excellence is man. All men are born with an infinite capacity for making noises and using them.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

1964, p. 141; Chapter 1; Chapter 1: The Origin of Speech
Speech, 1930

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo

“There are people who say that "Gül can't be my president". These people don't have good manners for and they should renounce their Turkish citizenship foremost this man will be chosen democratically by the people.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Gül'ü tanımayan vatandaşlıktan çıksın !" http://www.haberturk.com/haber.asp?id=33005&cat=110&dt=2007/08/21, Haberturk (August 21, 2007)

Henri Fantin-Latour photo
Saul D. Alinsky photo

“Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 128

Lydia Maria Child photo
William Robertson (historian) photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 49-50
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Jacques Maritain photo

“The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would.”

John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977) English Mathematician

Note quotation marks: Littlewood is repeating a joke without attribution. "Cross-purposes, Unconscious Assumptions, Howlers, Misprints, etc.", p. 59.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)

Josh Billings photo

“It iz comparitively eazy tew repent ov the sins that we hav committed, but tew repent ov thoze which we intend to commit, is asking tew mutch ov enny man, now days.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Affurisms: Jews Harps http://books.google.com/books?id=pkM1AAAAMAAJ&q=%22It+iz+comparitively+eazy+tew+repent+ov+the+sins+that+we+hav+committed+but+tew+repent+ov+thoze+which+we+intend+to+commit+is+asking+tew+mutch+ov+enny+man+now+days%22&pg=PA164#v=onepage, Josh Billings' Wit and Humor (1874)

H. G. Wells photo
Damian Pettigrew photo
James Thomson (B.V.) photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“Here lies David Garrick, describe me, who can,
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: Retaliation (1774), Line 93.

Andrew Sullivan photo
Ernest J. Gaines photo

“King is probably one of three men of this century that I'll call heroic. A fantastic man as far as I'm concerned, for all that he did.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

In an interview with Patricia Rickels, as quoted in John Lowe (1995) Conversations with Ernest Gaines, University Press of Mississippi, p. 131

Suzanne Collins photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Divinity College Address (1838)

Orson Scott Card photo

“We are all fools when one wise man appears.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

H. G. Wells photo

“Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness — waiting for the Food.”

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) - Online PDF and Epub http://books.google.com/books?id=VOyeAAAAIAAJ

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

Alexander Maclaren photo

“No man loveth God except the man who has first learned that God loves him.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

André Maurois photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; “I am rising to a man’s work.””

Meditations. v. 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ilana Mercer photo

“The liberal program aims to dissolve 'the constitution of man' in the service of sexual sameness. It is predicated on the imbecilic belief that biology is incidental, and that men and women are essentially interchangeable.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Are Liberal Pervs Sexually Obsessed With Refugees?" https://constitution.com/are-liberal-pervs-sexually-obsessed-with-refugees/, Constitution.com, April 27, 2018.
2010s, 2018

Rousas John Rushdoony photo