Quotes
Quotes about Men
The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.
If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men.
There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
Men cannot see their reflection in running water, but only in still water.
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.
It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to.
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
In the faces of men and women I see God.
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it.
The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy. [Lat., Illud tamen in primis testandum est, nihil praecepta atque artes valere nisi adjuvante natura.]
Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest. [Ger., Die Menschen gehen wie Schiesskugeln weiter, wenn sie abgeglattet sind.]
Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities.
Ability wins us the esteem of the true men; luck, that of the people.
The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
Behind every able man, there are always other able men.
Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
Is it men or women who work the most in slaughterhouses? Is it men or women who are most involved in domestic battering? Is it men or women who commit the most rapes? Is it men or women who vote for the most executions? Is it men or women who promote war, vote for war, kill in war? Is it men or women who as 'talk show hosts' allow no talk? Is it men or women who are more often pedophiles? Is it men or women who torture lab animals more?
But when he (man) shall have been taken from sight, he quickly goes also out of mind. [Lat., Cum autem sublatus fuerit ab oculis, etiam cito transit a mente.]
Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. [Fr., L'absence diminue les mediocres passions et augmente les grandes, comme le vent eteint les bougies et allume le feu.]
