Quotes about man
page 92

Noel Gallagher photo
Thomas Malory photo
William Carlos Williams photo
Johannes Warnardus Bilders photo

“On a certain day I packed my things and went to Oosterbeek [c. 1834-36]. I saw a man lying out of the window somewhere. Farmer! are there rooms for rent nearby? - Yes sir, even here. - I went in, saw a beautiful, suitable painting room; that satisfied me, I ask for nothing more. One hundred fifty guilders was the rent [per year]. I offered a hundred sixty when he also worked the garden and planted a lot of red cabbage, because I like to see that.”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Ik pakte mijn rommeltje en ging op een goeden dag naar [c. 1834-36]. Daar zag ik ergens een man uit het venster liggen. Boer! zijn hier in de buurt ook kamers te huur? - Jawel meneer, hier zelfs. - Ik ging naar binnen, zag een mooie, geschikte schilderkamer; dat was mij genoeg, ik vraag naar niets meer. Honderdvijftig gulden was de huur [per jaar]. Ik bood honderdzestig als hij dan ook den tuin bewerkte en vooral veel roode kool plantte, want die zie ik graag.
p. 78
1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900)

Ray Charles photo
Felix Frankfurter photo

“If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 312 (1946).
Judicial opinions

Chris Rock photo
African Spir photo
Muhammad photo
John Cale photo

“I use cracks on the sidewalk to walk down the street. I'd always walk on the lines. I never take anything but a calculated risk, and do it because it gives me a sense of identity. Fear is a man's best friend.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Georges Bataille photo

“My favourite ever headline was "Worksop Man Dies Of Natural Causes."”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

QI, Episode B.11

Jim Butcher photo

“Harry Dresden: Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator."”

The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002)

Godfrey Higgins photo

“The peninsula of India would be one of the first peopled countries, and its inhabitants would have all the habits of the progenitors of man before the flood in as much perfection or more than any other nation… In short, whatever learning man possessed before his dispersion may be expected to be found here, and of this, Hindustan affords innumerable traces… notwithstanding … the fruitless efforts of our priests to disguise it.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Higgins, The Celtic Druids. (quoted in Niranjan Shah, India: The Birthplace of Human Speech, International Vedic Vision, Sands Point, N.Y., 2013, p. 66. Quoted from Stephen Knapp, Mysteries of the Ancient Vedic Empire https://stephenknapp.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/a-look-at-india-from-the-views-of-other-scholars/

Frederick Douglass photo

“At 8 o’clock, the [body] of the hall was nearly filled with an intelligent and respectable looking audience – The exercises commenced with a patriotic song by the Hutchinsons, which was received with great applause. The Rev. H. H. Garnett opened the meeting stating that the black man, a fugitive from Virginia, who was announced to speak would not appear, as a communication had been received yesterday from the South intimating that, for prudential reasons, it would not be proper for that person to appear, as his presence might affect the interests and safety of others in the South, both white persons and colored. He also stated that another fugitive slave, who was at the battle of Bull Run, proposed when the meeting was announced to be present, but for a similar reason he was absent; he had unwillingly fought on the side of Rebellion, but now he was, fortunately where he could raise his voice on the side of Union and universal liberty. The question which now seemed to be prominent in the nation was simply whether the services of black men shall be received in this war, and a speedy victory be accomplished. If the day should ever come when the flag of our country shall be the symbol of universal liberty, the black man should be able to look up to that glorious flag, and say that it was his flag, and his country’s flag; and if the services of the black men were wanted it would be found that they would rush into the ranks, and in a very short time sweep all the rebel party from the face of the country”

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

Douglass Monthly https://web.archive.org/web/20160309192511/http://deadconfederates.com/tag/black-confederates/#_edn2 (March 1862), p. 623
1860s

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom photo

“Mona said, 'Did you see Gore's new play The Best Man when you were in New York?' 'Of course not.'…'Don't like plays, only shows.”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

He meant musical comedies."
In conversation with Mona Bismarck and Gore Vidal (Vidal, Palimpsest, 206)

Kurt Schwitters photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“All media of communications are cliches serving to enlarge man's scope of action, his patterns of associations and awareness. These media create environments that numb our powers of attention by sheer pervasiveness.”

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

1970s, From Cliché to Archetype (1970)

Francis Bacon photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 73.

Sinclair Lewis photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Gerald Ford photo

“As a man of the Congress, let me reaffirm my conviction that the collective wisdom of our two great legislative bodies, while not infallible, will in the end serve the people faithfully and very, very well.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, First Vice-Presidential address (1973)

Immortal Technique photo

“But if you on stage with the DEA, as your hype man, don't get yourself locked up and blame the white man.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Out on parole
Albums, The 3rd World (2008)

Marcus Terentius Varro photo

“No sick man's monstrous dream can be so wild that some philosopher won't say it's true.”
Postremo nemo aegrotus quidquam somniat tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus.

Marcus Terentius Varro (-116–-27 BC) ancient latin scholar

Eumenides, fragment 6, from Saturae Menippeae; translation from J. Wight Duff Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964) p. 90.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo

“Without fear or favour whatever successes I have been able to make of my life, I owe to the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi who could make man out of dust. I was greatly inspired in my youth by a remark Jawaharlal Nehru had made, ‘Success comes to those that dare and act…’ In fact this remark was my motto in life.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

in 1989 - towards the end of his Presidential term
Source: Pranab Mukherjee Press Information Bureau in: Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of the former President of India, Dr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=102099, Press Information Bureau, Government of India President's Secretariat

Albert Einstein photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Alexander Mackenzie photo

“I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what rank of life he may have taken his origin”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Speech to Working Men of Dundee July 14, 1875 - Speeches of Alexander Mackenzie during his recent visit...page 43

Ralph Ellison photo

“All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel—and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?—is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Art of Fiction: An Interview" (The Paris Review, Spring 1955), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 212.

Vladimir Lenin photo
Francis Bacon photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to rule another country must admit that a class is not fit to rule another class.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

John Stuart Mill photo
Edmund Burke photo

“They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

On the Army Estimates (9 February 1790)
1790s

Adolphe Quetelet photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Poul Anderson photo
George Herbert photo

“307. Hee wrongs not an old man that steales his supper from him.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Karl Barth photo

“Nothing is more characteristic of the Hegelian system of knowledge than the fact that upon its highest pinnacle, where it becomes knowledge of knowledge, i. e. knowledge knowing of itself, it is impossible for it to have any other content but simply the history of philosophy, the account of its continuing self-exposition, in which all individual developments, coming full circle, can only be stages along the road to the absolute philosophy reached in Hegel himself. But that which knowledge is explicitly upon this topmost pinnacle as the history of philosophy, the philosophy completed in Hegel, it is implicitly all along the line: the knowledge of history and the history of knowledge, the history of truth, the history of God, as Hegel was able to say: the philosophy of History. History here has entered so thoroughly into reason, philosophy has so basically become the philosophy of history, that reason, the object of philosophy itself, has become history utterly and completely, that reason cannot understand itself other than a sits own history, and that, from the opposite point of view, it is in a position to recognize itself at once in all history in some stage of its life-process, and also in its entirety, so far as the study permits us to divine the whole. It is a matter of the production of self-movement of the thought-content in the consciousness of the thinking subject. It is not a matter of reproduction! The Hegelian way of looking is the looking of a spectator only in so far as it is in fact in principle and exclusively theory, thinking consciousness. Granting this premise, and setting aside Kierkegaard’s objection that with it the spectator might by chance have forgotten himself, that is the practical reality of his existence, then for Hegel it is also in order (only too much in order!) that the human subject, whilst looking in this manner, stands by no means apart as if it were not concerned. It is in this looking that the something seen is produced. And the thing seen actually has its reality in the fact that it is produced as the thing seen in the looking of the human subject. Man cannot participate more energetically (within the frame-work of theoretical possibility), he cannot be more forcefully transferred from the floor of the theatre on to the stage than in his theory.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Karl Barth Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl, 1952, 1959 p. 284-285
Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl 1952, 1956

H. G. Wells photo
Samuel Butler photo

“Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

As quoted in 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1988) by Robert Byrne

Tom McCarthy (writer) photo
Norman Mailer photo
Josh Billings photo

“When a man gits tew talking about himself, he seldum fails tew be eloquent, and often reaches the sublime.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)

Nicolas Bouvier photo

“First stage: small stage", say the Persian caravaneers who know so well that, the first evening, everyone realises that he's forgotten something at home. Normally, one covers no more than a "pharsar" (around 6km). The careless should be able to go home and come back before sunrise. This concession to distraction is one more thing I love about Persia. I don't think there's a single practical measure in this country that neglects the irreducible imperfection of man.”

Première étape : petite étape », disent les caravaniers persans qui savent bien que, le soir du départ, chacun s'aperçoit qu'il a oublié quelque chose à la maison. D'ordinaire, on ne fait qu'un pharsar. Il faut que les étourdis puissent encore aller et revenir avant le lever du soleil. Cette part faite à la distraction m'est une raison de plus d'aimer la Perse. Je ne crois pas qu'il existe dans ce pays une seule disposition pratique qui néglige l'irréductible imperfection de l'homme.
Un pharsar représente environ 6 kilomètres. L'Usage du monde (1963), Nicolas Bouvier, éd. Payot, coll. « Petite Bibliothèque Payot/Voyageurs », 1992 (ISBN 2-228-88560-6), p. 259

Evagrius Ponticus photo
H. G. Wells photo

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

John Steinbeck photo

“Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is — and a woman too, I guess.”

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIV

Simone Weil photo

“It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 123

Robert Sheckley photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Arthur O'Shaughnessy photo
Ray Comfort photo

“Imagine how wicked society would be if the fear of God and the fear of civil law were both completely removed. Imagine if a man could rape and murder, with no concerns about being punished? That’s when we would see the true heart of humanity, and that’s where we as a nation are slowly heading.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

As quoted in Mass Murder 'Normal' in World without God' http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/mass-murder-normal-in-world-without-god/, Worldnutdaily (2012-07-23)

Lin Yutang photo

“A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.”

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 38 (Chinese saying)

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Arthur Wing Pinero photo

“From forty till fifty a man is at heart either a stoic or a satyr.”

Arthur Wing Pinero (1855–1934) British writer

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Act 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=P4A-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22From+forty+till+fifty+a+man+is+at+heart+either+a+stoic+or+a+satyr%22&pg=PA38#v=onepage (1893)

Josh Billings photo

“Misanthropy don't pay--thare aint no man living whoze hate the world cares one cuss for.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

William Cowper photo

“God made the country, and man made the town.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 749.

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them.”

No. XIV
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)

Edward Bernays photo
Prince photo

“I'm not a woman;
I'm not a man.
I am something that U'll never understand.
I'll never beat U;
I'll never lie.
And if U're evil I'll forgive U by and by.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

I Would Die 4 U
Song lyrics, Purple Rain (1984)

Jeffrey T. Kuhner photo
Marlene Dietrich photo

“Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

Rollo May photo

“Man is a complex being who makes deserts bloom and lakes die.”

Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) British writer

Quoted in Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes, and Brilliant Remarks By Karen Weekes, p. 305

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo

“Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame — to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

Last of the Barons (1843), Book v, Chapter i.

Kenneth Grahame photo
Jerry Seinfeld photo
Colin Wilson photo
Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
Bliss Carman photo

“The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man.”

Bliss Carman (1861–1929) author

New York Times review of Mr. Carman's Prose; A Volume Of Little Essays By The Canadian Poet. (1903).

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Walker Percy photo
Will Eisner photo

“Marriage is the last sacrament available to modern man, and with the terrible destruction of interpersonal relations by capitalism and its war-making State, it is not very available, nor is it surely enduring. But then, vision does not come with guarantees.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"World War II" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/6.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Karen Blixen photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Walter de la Mare photo

“Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

All That's Past.

James Wilson photo

“Man, fearfully and wonderfully made, is the workmanship of his all perfect Creator: A State; useful and valuable as the contrivance is, is the inferior contrivance of man; and from his native dignity derives all its acquired importance.”

James Wilson (1742–1798) one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independe…

Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dallas) 419 (1793), at 455.

Dhyan Chand photo
Jack Paar photo

“Now that man can fly through the air like a bird … and swim in the sea like a fish, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could just walk the earth like a man?”

Jack Paar (1918–2004) American author, radio and television comedian and talk show host

My Saber is Bent http://books.google.com/books?id=MO-mqER9TrsC&q=%22Now+that+man+can+fly+through+the+air+like+a+bird%22+%22and+swim+in+the+sea+like+a+fish+wouldn't+it+be+wonderful+if+he+could+just+walk+the+earth+like+a+man%22&pg=PA79#v=onepage (1961)