Quotes on Men

To a man of liberal education, the study of history is not only useful, and important, but altogether indispensable, and with regard to the history contained in the Bible ...it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with as it is shameful to be ignorant of it.

The same power is in every man, the one manifesting more, the other less; the same potentiality is in everyone.

If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.

There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.

We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

Genius: the superhuman in man.

Searching for what I need, and I don't even know precisely what that is, I was going from a man to a man, and I saw that all of them together have less than me who has nothing, and that I left to each of them a bit of that what I don't have and I've been searching for.

There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.

Good Lord, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his books and his crooks, With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all, he's a problem must puzzle the devil.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

Let it [racism] be a problem to someone else... Let it drag them down. Don't use it as an excuse for your own shortcomings.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

It has not been my fortune to know very much of Freemasonry, but I have had the great fortune to know many Freemasons and have been able in that way to judge the tree by its fruit. I know of your high ideals. I have seen that you hold your meetings in the presence of the open Bible, and I know that men who observe that formality have high sentiments of citizenship, of worth, and character. That is the strength of our Commonwealth and nation.

Freemasonry is a moral order, instituted by virtuous men, with the praiseworthy design of recalling to our remembrance the most sublime truths, in the midst of the most innocent and social pleasures, founded on liberality, brotherly love and charity.

I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting some false and most pernicious notions about consistency - and to such a degree that the average man has turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized, where it should be his humiliation.

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along with them,-though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,-that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.

What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces.

There are no wild animals until man makes them so.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

In this world, the greatest courage is to drop the mind aside. The bravest man is who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior - there are no distinctions.

[E]very act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.