Men Quotes - Page 29

• 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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• Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Healthy, Individuality, Democracy

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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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• Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Prayer, President, Liberty

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.432, Penguin

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• There is in all animals a sense of duty that man condescends to call instinct.

  Robert Breault

  Animal, Humanity, Instinct

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• Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Home, Cat, Animal

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• I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Thinking, Race

  "Concerning the Jews" (1899)

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• Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions and barren zeal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Regret, Opportunity, Design

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mistake, Miscarriage, Numbers

  Samuel Johnson (1840). “The Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson...”, p.259

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• It is natural for every man uninstructed to murmur at his condition, because, in the general infelicity of life, he feels his own miseries without knowing that they are common to all the rest of the species; and, therefore, though he will not be less sensible of pain by being told that others are equally tormented, he will at least be freed from the temptation of seeking, by perpetual changes, that ease which is no where to be found, and though his diseases still continue, he escapes the hazard of exasperating it by remedies.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Knowing, Temptation

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay”, p.310

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• The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

  Samuel Johnson

  Home, Ambition, Giving

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.431

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• Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

  Samuel Johnson

  Eye, Humanity, Misery

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.267

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• Faults and defects every work of man must have.

  Samuel Johnson

  Humanity, Faults, Defects

  John Milton, Elijah Fenton, Samuel Johnson (1821). “Paradise lost”, p.33

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• No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness; and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Thinking, Humanity

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson”, p.384

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• We are unreasonably desirous to separate the goods of life from those evils which Providence has connected with them, and to catch advantages without paying the price at which they are offered to us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few have the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new discoveries, or by superiority of skill in any necessary employment; and among lower understandings many want the firmness and industry requisite to regular gain and gradual acquisitions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Skills, Discovery, Evil

  Samuel Johnson (1824). “Works: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.243

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• The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous; yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.

  Samuel Johnson

  Powerful, Numbers, Names

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.125

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• The power, indeed, of every individual is small, and the consequence of his endeavours imperceptible, in a general prospect of the world. Providence has given no man ability to do much, that something might be left for every man to do. The business of life is carried on by a general co-operation; in which the part of any single man can be no more distinguished, than the effect of a particular drop when the meadows are floated by a summer shower: yet every drop increases the inundation, and every hand adds to the happiness or misery of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Summer, Hands, Humanity

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.291

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• Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Humanity, Quality

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The works of Samuel Johnson”, p.203

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• It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Grief, Drawing

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.453

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• The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women.

  Learned Hand

  Freedom, Mind, Liberty

  "The Spirit of Liberty" (speech), New York, N.Y., 21 May 1944

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• Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Spring, Civilization

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• The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Loyalty, Country, Freedom

  "Schaefer v. United States, 251 U.S. 466". Dissenting opinion, 1920.

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• Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners.

  C. S. Lewis

  Rights, Differences, Humanity

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• A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Country, Party, Class

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.

  Walter Lippmann

  Tolerance, Liberty, Matter

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