Quotes
Quotes about Men
When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.
I'm sometimes asked "Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots." -George T. Angell, reformer (1823-1909)
To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reach us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiation of their personalities.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedomsâto choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony.
His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." - H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the sinners who believe themselves righteous.
