Quotes on Men

Climbing for speed records will probably become more popular, a mania which has just begun. Climbers climb not just to see how fast and efficiently they can do it, but far worse, to see how much faster and more efficiently they are than a party which did the same climb a few days before. The climb becomes secondary, no more important than a racetrack. Man is pitted against man.

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended upon man.

Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.

I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.

Whatsoever is done out of pure love, be it ever so little or contemptible in the sight of men, is wholly fruitful; for God measures more with how much love one worketh, than the amount he doeth.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, an that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire." (From Rebecca)

Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.

Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.

Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you. Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.

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.

What you don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.

As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.

Sometimes it seems especially difficult to submit to "great tribulation" when we look around and see others seemingly much less obedient who triumph even as we weep. But time is measured only unto man, says Alma (see Alma 40:8), and God has a very good memory.

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.

A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him, than what it has denied.

Wise men appreciate all men, for they see the good in each and know how hard it is to make anything good.