Quotes on Men

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

A man should carry nature in his head.

Brutes by their natural instinct have produced many discoveries, whereas men by discussion and the conclusions of reason have given birth to few or none.

There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.