Men Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Variant translation: And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him

Niccolò Machiavelli

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

Let there be no inscription upon my tomb. Let no man write my epitaph. No man can write my epitaph. I am here ready to die. I am not allowed to vindicate my character; and when I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare calumniate me. Let my character and motives repose in obscurity and peace, till other times and other men can do them justice.

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

Herman Melville

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

Carolyn Heilbrun

The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.

Very few men are fortunate enough to gain distinction during their first term in Congress.

John George Nicolay

When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Men often compete with one another until the day they die; comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

Edward Hoagland

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams

We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

William Ellery Channing

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.

It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed.

Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.

When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

A man must be sacrificed now and again
To provide for the next generation of men.

As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.

Giacomo Casanova

Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history.

John Moody (financial analyst)