Men Quotes - Page 25

• Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

  Gabriel Marcel

  Home, Contemplation, Highest

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• No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due to his neighbor.

  Saint Augustine

  Ease, Forget, Neighbor

  Saint Augustine of Hippo, Aeterna Press (1931). “The City of God”, p.1710, Aeterna Press

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• It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Leisure, Common

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• But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology. Moreover, they must be men of action and not contemplation. I have the impression that no method of education can produce people with all the qualities required. I am haunted by the idea that this break in human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable.

  Max Born

  Education, Science, Technology

  "My Life & My Views". Book by Max Born, 1968.

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• There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.

  Rene Dubos

  Technology, Civilization, Demon

  "A God Within". Book by René Dubos, 1972.

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• Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Believe, Possibility

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle (1841). “Essays”, p.308

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• Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

  Paul Valery

  Ideas, Doing Nothing, Precise

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• Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Believe, Mind, Belief

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• Without pleasure man would live like a fool and soon die.

  Pierre Beaumarchais

  Fool, Pleasure, Dies

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• God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night as in a soil.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Sleep, Night, Roots

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Lectures to young men, on various important subjects”, p.274

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• Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence.

  Herman E. Daly

  Independent, Technology, Facts

  Herman E. Daly (1991). “Steady-State Economics: Second Edition With New Essays”, p.125, Island Press

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• That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

  William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

  Support, Use, Want

  Replying to a politician who said 'I will support you as long as you are in the right', in Lord David Cecil 'Lord M' (1954) ch. 4

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• Men do not like to admit to even momentary imperfection. My husband forgot the code to turn off the alarm. When the police came, he wouldn't admit he'd forgotten the code... he turned himself in.

  Rita Rudner

  Funny, Husband, Humor

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• The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Real, Science, Technology

  1967 The New Industrial State.

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• And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Believe, Damnation, Alive

  Arthur Rimbaud (1994). “A Season in Hell and Other Poems”, Anvil PressPoetry Limited

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• The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

  John Quincy Adams

  Wise, Wisdom, Law

  John Quincy Adams (1848). “Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings”, p.23

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• If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

  Samuel Adams

  Giving Up, Mistake, Law

  John White, Cecil Calvert Baltimore (2d Baron), Charles Hudson, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1904). “The planting of colonies in New England”

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• I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

  Norman Cousins

  Color, Opposites, Diversity

  Norman Cousins (1991). “The Celebration of Life: A Dialogue on Hope, Spirit, and the Immortality of the Soul”, Bantam

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• Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.

  Clarence Darrow

  Jealous, Heart, Eye

  Clarence Darrow's funeral oration for John Peter Altgeld, March 14, 1902.

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• In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Law, Liberty, Citizens

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.378, Modern Library

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• If a blending of individualism and of cooperative participation is a prerequisite to a democratic solution of the problems of a society of free men, it must also be noted that an atmosphere of freedom is required if these problems are to be met constructively and as they arise.

  Marshall Field

  Atmosphere, Society, Liberty

  Marshall Field (1945). “Freedom is More Than a Word”

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• The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Leadership, Liberty, Followers

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• There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women - of free mothers.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Mother, Equality, Liberty

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.973, Library of Alexandria

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• In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Abuse, Age

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.74, Modern Library

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• Man's ethics must not end with man, but should extend to the universe. He must regain the consciousness of the great Chain of Life from which he cannot be separated.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Ethics, Consciousness

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