Men Quotes

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The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy — that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning — is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality — theoretically and by hearsay — is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men's cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

Variant translation: The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.

Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around a Swedish airline stewardess and some handcuffs.

Farewell, and may the blessing of Elves and Men and all Free Folk go with you. May the stars shine upon your faces!

J. R. R. Tolkien

History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born.

Simone de Beauvoir

Time ripens all things. No man is born wise. Bishops are made of men and not of stones.

Miguel de Cervantes

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.

Bertrand Russell

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.

Theodore Roosevelt

Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.

Neither should men study war with a view to the enslavement of those who do not deserve to be enslaved; but first of all they should provide against their own enslavement, and in the second place obtain empire for the good of the governed, and not for the sake of exercising a general despotism, and in the third place they should seek to be masters only over those who deserve to be slaves.

Men make use of their illnesses at least as much as they are made use of by them.

To understand political power aright, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

The tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony.

William Shakespeare

The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men.

The imagination is always restless and suggests a variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: And when Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the Nations of the World, will find so much of the Governments, Religion, and Manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that they will have but little Reverence for the Practices which are in use and credit amongst Men.

This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

Prayer is the little implement
Through which men reach
Where presence—is denied them.

Emily Dickinson

And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.

G. K. Chesterton

Men of practical knowledge find their gratification among rivers.

You cannot go against nature. She is stronger than the strongest of men. We can permit ourselves some liberties, but in details only.

Men love you more if they can be made a little uncertain about owning you.

There has not been any science so much esteemed and honored as this of mathematics, nor with so much industry and vigilance become the care of great men, and labored in by the potentates of the world, viz... emperors, kings, princes, etc.

Benjamin Franklin

We sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species - preference for man simply because we are men - is not sentiment, then what is?

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.

George Bernard Shaw