Quotes about man
page 72

William Morris photo

“Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making; or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Art and Socialism (1884)

Robert Fisk photo
Van Morrison photo
Steven Erikson photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,—
He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 2
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“You sound like a man with a vision. Care to pass that bong over this way?”

Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer

NANOG mailing list http://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@merit.edu/msg21718.html (2004)

“You cannot always tell what a man is by looking at him. What he appears to be and what he really is may be radically different. The appearance of a man today does not always reveal what he will be tomorrow.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 31

China Miéville photo
Francois Rabelais photo

“He freshly and cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time.”

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 62.

Gene Wolfe photo
Democritus photo

“A sensible man takes pleasure in what he has instead of pining for what he has not.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Lord Bacon (1837)

Giacomo Casanova photo

“Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

.
The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
Referenced
Variant: [H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[. ]

Nathaniel Parker Willis photo

“For it stirs the blood in an old man’s heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) American magazine writer, editor, and publisher

Saturday Afternoon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Elie Wiesel photo
George H. W. Bush photo

“It just isn't going to work, and it's very interesting that the man who invented this type of what I call a voodoo economic policy is Art Laffer, a California economist.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George H. W. Bush, Speech at Carnegie Mellon University (10 April 1980)

Montesquieu photo
Vikram Sarabhai photo

“We are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man's society.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

On the development of Indian Space Researach progarmme which he headed and the notable success achieved in the field.
Variant: But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.

Jean Dubuffet photo

“Every piece of information about these statues is totally useless... What. import is it to us if their author was a bureaucrat or a cowherd, an old man or a young person? It is very unfounded to pay attention to these meager ircumstances. There is no difference between an old and young man. Not the least in any domain. Or if he was from Burgundy or Auvergne it's the same. And if he is alive or dead for who knows how long it is the same to us. Between a contemporary and someone from the last century, or a companion of Clovis or the big prehistoric reptiles? No difference whatsoever. We are completely wrong to take interest in these details.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote in Dubuffet's 1947 Entry on an anonymous sculptor, associated with the Swiss collector O.J. Müller; from: Jean Dubuffet, Les Barbus Müller et Autres Pièces de la Statuaire Provinciale(1947), in Prospectus I, pp. 498-49 (transl. Kent Minturn)
remark about the publication of biographically based texts on individual art brut artists; according to Dubuffet: veritable history of art without 'names,' 'dates,' or 'histories'.
1940's

“A man´s study reflects himself as he wishes to be seen publicly, but his journal, if he is honest, reflects something else.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

George W. Bush photo

“I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

to Ariel Sharon, quoted in [2003-06-02, Glenn, Kessler, Bush Sticks to the Broad Strokes; In Mideast Peace Push, President Wary of Details and Deep Intervention, The Washington Post, A.01, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/343021791.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT]
2000s, 2003

Clifford D. Simak photo
Edward Young photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Bill Hicks photo
William James photo
Richard Russo photo

“Thou too take courage, wealth despise,
And fit thee to ascend the skies,
Nor be a poor man's courtesies
Rejected or disdained.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VIII, p. 286

Hans Arp photo

“These paintings, these sculptures – these objects – should remain anonymous, in the great workshop of nature, like the clouds, the mountains, the seas, the animals, and man himself. Yes! Man should go back to nature! Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

In 1915, w:Otto van Rees, A.C. van Rees, Freundlich, S. Taeuber [his wife] and Arp made an attempt of this sort, as Arp mentioned himself.
Source: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118

Albert Einstein photo

“Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

A note Einstein wrote underneath an etching of himself (made by Hermann Struck) which he sent to a friend, Dr. Hans Mühsam. According to the book, "the date is 1920 or perhaps earlier", p. 24
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

“To me, there are two different types of musicians. Those who are display oriented and those who are content oriented, Bill Evans being a prime example of the content orientation. I am not interested in the displayers—guys who want to be playing a lot of notes to try to impress you that they got a lot of things that they can lay in there. I'm more interested in somebody picking something that has some really great feeling and laying it in, in a really good time concept. Jimmy Rowles is a perfectly good example of that. His choice of notes may not be uncommon, but boy where he lays them down is so individual that I will go for that every time. The same thing applies with composers. When you're a young composer and you first have a chance—and this goes with everybody—you write your most complex works when you're a young man. And then, as you get a little bit older, you find that you can lot simpler things [sic] and still enjoy the devil out of what you're doing.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22It+seems+that+today,+particularly+with+younger+piano%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylFb7q&sig=zPFSLx48xHOhugAAlpcRNKTxUlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY_Zay4cbRAhWLKiYKHdVRC3gQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

Walter Benjamin photo

“For me, it was like this: pronounced antipathy to conversing about matters of practical life, the future, dates, politics. You are fixated on the intellectual sphere as a man possessed may be fixated on the sexual: under its spell, sucked into it.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Mir schien: Ausgesprochene Unlust, mich über Dinge des praktischen Lebens, Zukunft, Daten, Politik zu unterhalten. Man ist an die intellektuelle Sphäre gebannt wie manchmal Besessene auf die sexuelle, ist von ihr angesaugt.
"Main features of my first impression of hashish" (18 December 1927), On Hashish (2006), p. 21
Main features of my first impression of hashish (1927)

Aldous Huxley photo
J. R. D. Tata photo
Albert Barnes photo
Warren Farrell photo
Stewart Lee photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“I am absolutely sure to be the most democratic man to ever become Prime Minister in Italy.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

ASCA (25 January 2002)
2002

Thomas Carlyle photo
Hannah Arendt photo

“Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer's word was that the latter's validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer's order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisors, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law. Needless to add, the resulting legal paraphernalia, far from being a mere symptom of German pedantry and thoroughness, served most effectively to give the whole business its outward appearance of legality.And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it — the quality of temptation.”

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VIII.

Abraham Isaac Kook photo

“The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.”

Orot Yisrael, Ch. 5, article 10, p. 156; as quoted in "The Distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Torah" by Rabbi David Bar Chaim http://www.daatemet.org.il/articles/article.cfm?article_id=119&lang=en
Variant:
The dissimilarity between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing vis-à-vis the soul of all the Gentiles — on all of their levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality
As quoted in "A British Synagogue Bans a Famous Hassidic Text!" (February 2010) by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel http://rabbimichaelsamuel.com/2010/02/2744/#_ftn1.
Orot

Athanasius of Alexandria photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Lucy Stone photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“"You've never heard of Paul Revere?" "No." "Lucky man, Sharpe. He called my father a traitor, and our family called Revere a traitor, and I rather think we lost the argument."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Thomas Leroy, and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 81
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Company (1982)

“Rational people,” said the man, “realize that their lives must be made meaningful. Meaning isn’t just given us.”

Joanna Russ (1937–2011) American author

Source: Fiction, And Chaos Died (1970), Chapter 3 (p. 155)

G. K. Chesterton photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Philip José Farmer photo
James Dickey photo

“I saw for a blazing moment
The great grassy world from both sides,
Man and beast in the round of their need.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

The Sheep Child (l. 41–43).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

Samuel Butler photo
James Boswell photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo

“I felt that everything is beautiful, but [not? ] that which man tries intentionally to make beautiful; that the work of an ordinary bricklayer is more valid than the artwork of all but a very few artists.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Quotes from 'Notes from 1969', Ellsworth Kelly; as quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 13 December
1969 - 1980

Steve Kilbey photo

“Your men are brave men, And you have won. I can live with that, Earl of Bronze — a poor man would I be if I could not.”

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 31

Anthony Fitzherbert photo

“Ryght so euery man is capitayne of his owne soule.”

Anthony Fitzherbert (1470–1538) English judge, scholar and legal author

Source: The book of the husbandry. (1523/1882), p. 117.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The new media are not bridges between man and nature - they are nature…The new media are not ways of relating us to the old world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.”

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

Media as the New Nature, 1969, p. 14
1960s

Shamini Flint photo
Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji photo
Charles Dickens photo
Ken Ham photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Earl Warren photo

“I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's failures.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

As quoted in Sports Illustrated (22 July 1968)
Variants:
I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in Best Sports Stories : 1975 (1976) by Irving T. Marsh
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) by George Plimpton, p. 470
1960s

Luther Burbank photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Thomas Moore photo

“There was a little man, and he had a little soul;
And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Little Man and Little Soul.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Adam Smith photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“284. A Man knows his Companion in a long Journey and a little Inn.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Andrew Paterson photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Otto Weininger photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Gerald Massey photo

“The time shall come
When man to man shall be a friend and brother.”

Gerald Massey (1828–1907) British poet

Hope on, hope ever, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Horace Mann photo

“If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Journal entry (29 October 1838)

Orson Scott Card photo

“Sollima was considered to be the intellectual among the Western filmmakers. I enjoyed working with him. He was a very intelligent and gifted man.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

William Wordsworth photo
Septimius Severus photo

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Albrecht Thaer photo

“In the second year of my residence in Gottingen, I entered my name for a course of lectures on practical physics, against the advice of all my friends, but I have never regretted so doing, as there never has been, and probably never will be, a greater man at the university than Doctor Schroder, physician to the king, who gave, at that period, his celebrated lectures on practical physics. Schroder himself was astonished at the step I had taken; but when he perceived that I fully understood him, I became one of his favourite pupils; nor had I the advantage alone of receiving private lessons gratis, but he took me with him in most of his professional visits, where I had all the advantages of his great practice. Thus I caught a putrid fever which was then very prevalent; Schroeder attended me day and night, and giving up all hopes of my recovery, he observed to one of his friends, not thinking that I understood what he said, "The expansion of the sinews increases." "Then," answered I, in a quiet manner, "I shall die in four days, according to such and such a rule of Hippocrates: pray, prepare my father to receive the news of my death." However, immediately after, a sudden turn in the disorder taking place, I soon recovered; not so my memory, which I lost for a time, so that I had forgotten the names of my best friends; my nerves were so completely shaken, that I had no wish to recover. After my recovery, Professor Schroeder being himself attacked with the same fever, requested of his wife that no other physician than myself should attend him; but when he became light-headed, she called in all the physicians of Gottingen, and these gentlemen not agreeing in opinion respecting the treatment of the patient, this great and learned man fell a victim to ignorance and jealousy, April 21, 1772. I cannot think of this celebrated and good man without shedding tears of regret and gratitude.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Joseph Addison photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Dr. Francia (1845).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Karl Kraus photo

“The woman takes one for all, and the man all for one.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Edward Carpenter photo
John Dos Passos photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

John Neal, as quoted in The Journal of Education for Upper Canada Vol. III (1850)
Misattributed

Cesare Pavese photo

“There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)