Quotes About Men

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.

Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies

Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.

Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And

La masse des hommes sert l'État de la sorte, pas en tant qu'hommes, mais comme des machines, avec leurs corps. Ils forment l'armée de métier, ainsi que la milice, les geôliers, policiers, posse comitatus, etc. Dans la plupart des cas, il n'existe aucun libre exercice du jugement ou du sens moral ; mais ils se mettent au niveau du bois, de la terre et des pierres ; et l'on pourrait réaliser des hommes de bois qui rempliraient aussi bien cette fonction.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here.

heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate THEIR liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The false society of men— —for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.

Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, wether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.

If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.

Mientras que la civilización ha ido mejorando nuestro habitat, no ha hecho igual con los hombres que han de poblarlo. Ha creado palacios, pero no era tan fácil crear nobles y reyes. Y si los objetivos que persigue el hombre civilizado no tienen más valor que los del salvaje, si empeña la mayor parte de su vida en la satisfacción de necesidades no imprescindibles y de meras comodidades, ¿por qué ha de tener una morada mejor que la de aquél?