Quotes on Men

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

The love between dog and man is idyllic, dogs were never expelled from paradise.

The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.

The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence.

People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? 'Natural' death, almost by defintion, means something slow, smelly and painful.

The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.

No man will subject himself to the ridicule of pretending that any natural connection subsists between the sun or the seasons, and the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power. Happily for mankind, liberty is not, in this respect, confined to any single point of time, but lies within extremes, which afford sufficient latitude for all the variations which may be required by the various situations and circumstances of civil society.

There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.

[T]he man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

Manufacturing establishments not only occasion a positive augmentation of the produce and revenue of the society . . . they contribute essentially to rendering them greater than they could possibly be, without such establishments. These circumstances are . . . greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other.

What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.

It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character.

[T]he hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.

The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.