Quotes on Men

A great nation is like a great man:When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.Having realized it, he admits it.Having admitted it, he corrects it.He considers those who point out his faultsas his most benevolent teachers.He thinks of his enemyas the shadow that he himself casts.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will.

Astronomy would not provide me with bread if men did not entertain hopes of reading the future in the heavens.

The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.

Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

The gentleman is a man of truth.

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.

Letting go all else, cling to the following few truths. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come - dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one long dead and gone.

The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his actions.

Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.