Quotes about reputation
page 2

Ellen G. White photo
Robert Crumb photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

for example, the Jews in Poland

page 77 of 6 December 2012 publication by Springer Science & Business Media https://books.google.ca/books?id=nRArBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA77, translation by Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)

page 238 of "Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4EmqLCWUFvEC&pg=PA238 in 1998, page 221 of "Acts of Religion" https://books.google.ca/books?id=c_kgAmFbvP0C&pg=PA221 in 2002, page 235 of "Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine" https://books.google.ca/books?id=CYcOfkrduWYC&pg=PA235 in 2004, page 44 of "Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism" https://books.google.ca/books?id=IYVDMuOFN20C&pg=PA44 in 2005, page 8 of "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" https://books.google.ca/books?id=juCYcPWdqccC&pg=PA8 in 2010, page 155 of "Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture" https://books.google.ca/books?id=YMIsYMw0ES0C&pg=PA155 in 2012, page 75 of "Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4svsCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT75 in 2016 and page 39 of "Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews" https://books.google.ca/books?id=6kk_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA39 in 2017 also quote this.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Jerry Coyne photo
Richard Bentley photo

“It is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself.”

Richard Bentley (1662–1742) English classical scholar and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge

Monk's Life of Bentley, p. 90.

G. K. Chesterton photo

“Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.”

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Sins of Prince Saradine
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“The hills and rivers of the lowland country
You have made your battle ground.
How do you suppose the people who live there
Will procure firewood and hay?
Do not let me hear you talking together
About titles and promotions;
For a single general’s reputation
Is made out of ten thousand corpses.”

Ts'ao Sung (830–901)

As translated by Arthur Waley in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1918)
Variant translations:
Rich hills and fields that war despoiled.
Their people how could they live?
Sing me no more of epics—some Man gained
Eternal fame on skeletons.
Shi ci yi xuan: Poems from China (1950), p. 35
A Protest in the Sixth Year of Qianfu (A.D. 879)

Mihira Bhoja I photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Albert Barnes photo
Siegbert Tarrasch photo

“To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game.”

Siegbert Tarrasch (1862–1934) German chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Response to a question as to What was the object of playing a gambit opening, as quoted in The Treasury of Chess Lore (1959) by Fred Reinfeld

Nathan Bedford Forrest photo

“Preserve untarnished the reputation you have so nobly won.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

Part of Forrest's last address to his men, 1865. As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s

William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo

“It is this book ['The Imitation of Christ'] that has helped me lead my life which such serenity and has always left me with a contended heart. I has taught me that men should not puff themselves up with pride, whether they are emperors, adding this or that province tot heir empires, or painters who gain a reputation.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote, recorded by Madame Aviat; as cited in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 272-73 – quote 69
1860s

Al Gore photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo

“…you know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 137

Booker T. Washington photo

“After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man or woman who has completed a full course of education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 percent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate. But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth: in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Speech in New York (12 February 1904), as quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell in the House of Representatives https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (4 April 1904)
1900s

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
C. D. Broad photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
William Rowan Hamilton photo
Richard Holt Hutton photo

“Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a neutral or sexless agency, have a strange idea of doing service to his reputation.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Leonardo da Vinci (1939), Ch. Two: 1481-1490

Tommy Franks photo
Patrick Dixon photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!”

Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

Alan Sillitoe photo

“Few writers who have managed to acquire his reputation can have been so much at the mercy of crude emotion.”

Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) British writer

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1973] 1975) vol. 1, p. 337.
Criticism

Berthe Morisot photo

“It is odd that Edouard [Manet] with his reputation as an innovator, who has survived such storms of criticism, should suddenly be seen as a classicist. It just proves the imbecility of the public, for he has always been a classic painter.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote of Berthe Morisot, 1884; as cited in Impressionist quartet, ed. Jeffrey Meyers; publishers, Harcourt, 2005, pp. 124-125
1881 - 1895

Margaret Chase Smith photo
Dag Hammarskjöld photo

“Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

Swapan Dasgupta photo
Gloria Allred photo

“It could be advantageous for Mr. Cosby to give up the statute of limitations because there is a huge cloud on his reputation and legacy.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

Statement by Gloria Allred at press conference representing three women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby — quoted in: [December 6, 2014, http://uptownmagazine.com/2014/12/judy-hurth-sues-bill-cosby-gloria-allred/, Uptown Magazine, K, Whaley, December 4, 2014, New Accuser Sues Bill Cosby, Gloria Allred Demands He Face Judgement]

Amir Taheri photo

“In Arab countries today, bin Ladenism looks like a nightmare from a bygone era. Many Arabs have discovered that the alternative to despotism is democracy, not al Qaeda. In fact, the Arab Spring became possible partly because the new urban middle classes were convinced that, by rising against despots, they wouldn’t be jumping into the fire from the frying pan. There was a time when bin Laden’s slightest utterance made the headlines in most Arab countries. Gradually, however, he came to provoke only a yawn in most places. Even the Qatari satellite-TV network al-Jazeera, which made its reputation as “bin Laden’s home TV,” stopped giving him star treatment. Left behind by developments in Arab countries, al Qaeda has gradually shed its ideological pretensions and mutated into a purely terrorist franchise. Its motto: One man, one bomb. Shut out of Arab countries, al Qaeda has been recruiting among Muslims in Europe and North America. Hundreds of European, American and Canadian Muslims have been to al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group also has sleeper cells in some Asian countries — notably India, Thailand and the Philippines. It will also keep Pakistan high on its target list, and continue to help the Taliban in its forlorn attempt at regaining power. Yet al Qaeda is bound to fade away, as have all terrorist organizations in history — though this will take some time. Meanwhile, the major democracies should throw their support behind the Arab Spring and help it find its way to a future free of both despotism and Islamic terrorism.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Evil reign collapsed years before he fell" http://nypost.com/2011/05/03/evil-reign-collapsed-years-before-he-fell/, New York Post (May 3, 2011).
New York Post

William Caxton photo

“Al these thynges consydered, there can no man resonably gaynsaye but there was a kyng of thys lande named Arthur. For in al places, Crysten and hethen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the fyrst of the thre Crysten men.”

William Caxton (1422–1491) English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer

Preface to Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte Darthur (1485); cited from Sir Thomas Malory (ed. Eugène Vinaver) Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) p. xiv.

Khushwant Singh photo
Arthur Ponsonby photo
Tony Blair photo

“The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Lecture on Our Nation's Future - Public Life http://web.archive.org/20071029204355/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page11923.asp, Reuters, 12 June 2007.
2000s

Thorstein Veblen photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 215.

John Bartholomew Gough photo
Harold Holt photo

“Anything but a yes vote to this question would do injury to our reputation among fair-minded people everywhere.”

Harold Holt (1908–1967) Australian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Australia

statement on the referendum on Aboriginal Australians, 26 May 1967
As prime minister
Source: The Life and Death of Harold Holt, p. 213.

Richard Rohr photo

“The world, the system, moves forward out of fear. That’s why they have to threaten us to play the game. We’re threatened with loss of job, money, reputation, or prestige. It’s all based on fear.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 85-86

Charles Darwin photo

“We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Statius photo

“Reputation hidden in death.”
Titulique in morte latentes.

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 712

Daniel Berrigan photo

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

Andrei Lankov photo
Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan photo
Mario Cuomo photo
Shaun Ellis photo
Francesco Berni photo

“He who conveys a ring, a horse, a hat,
And things like these, shows some discrimination;
Mere petty pilfering a the name for that.
But him who steals another's reputation,
And on the fruits of others' toil grows fat,
Hail thief and murderer by acclamation.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Chi ruba un corno, un cavallo, un anello,
E simil cose, ha qualche discrezione,
potrebbe chiarnarsi ladroncello;
Ma quel che ruba la riputazione,
E de l'altrui fatiche si fa bello,
Si puo chiamare assassino e ladrone.
LI, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

George S. Patton photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Julius Erasmus Hilgard photo
Madeleine K. Albright photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Albert Hofmann photo
Omar Khayyám photo

“Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Source: The Rubaiyat (1120)

Robert Solow photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Joseph Addison photo

“Death only closes a Man's Reputation, and determines it as good or bad.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 349 (10 April 1712)
Famously seen on the brothel wall in the film Easy Rider.
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Adélard Godbout photo

“Did not Mister Godbout himself – I will surprise many, such a bad historical reputation was made about him – propose in 1948, in all letters, the holding of a referendum to reach […], let us get ready, "an equal to equal agreement between Quebec and Canada?"”

Adélard Godbout (1892–1956) Canadian politician

It was 32 years ago...
By René Lévesque, March 4, 1980, on the day the 1980 referendum question was presented at the National Assembly of Quebec.
Reference: René Lévesque, Mot à Mot, Les Éditions internationales Alain Stanké, 1997.
Original: Monsieur Godbout lui-même – je vais en surprendre plusieurs, on lui a fait tellement une mauvaise réputation historiquement – ne proposait-il pas en 1948, et en toutes lettres, la tenue d'un référendum pour en arriver [...], tenons-nous bien, "à une entente d'égal à égal entre le Québec et le Canada"? Il y a 32 ans de cela...

Frances Burney photo
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden photo
Mike Tyson photo
Muhammad bin Tughluq photo
Camille Paglia photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Martin Rushent photo
James II of England photo
Bill Moyers photo
Noel Coward photo
Artimus Pyle photo
Jesse Helms photo

“To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

1956) on criticism that a fictional character in his newspaper column was offensive cited The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/weekinreview/ideas-trends-the-quotations-of-chairman-helms-race-god-aids-and-more.html (2001
1950s

James Madison photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the whole history of science there is a case of any man of reputation getting himself into such a contemptible position.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

About Richard Owen's view on human and ape brains, in a letter to J.D. Hooker (27 April 1861) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/letters/61.html
1860s

Miuccia Prada photo

“I'm not really interested in building a reputation for myself. But I do care for what the company stands for. I believe in work and being connected to the world we live in.”

Miuccia Prada (1948) Italian fashion designer and entrepreneur

On Reputation - Miuccia Prada - forbes.com https://www.forbes.com/100-greatest-business-minds/person/miuccia-prada

Bret Easton Ellis photo
John Banville photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Pierre Duhem photo

“A physical theory reputed to be satisfactory by the sectarians of one metaphysical school will be rejected by the partisans of another school.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

John C. Wright photo

“Were I a real master of intrigue, I would not have the reputation for being a master of intrigue.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 17, “The Ire of the Heavens” (p. 260)

John F. Kennedy photo

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Undated Letter to a Navy friend http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; also mentioned by William Safire in his "On Language" article "Warrior" in the New York Times rubric Magazines (26 August 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26wwln-safire-t.html; also in A Thousand Days : John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965), by Arthur Schlesinger, p. 88 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
Pre-1960

Pythagoras photo
Thorstein Veblen photo