Quotes
Quotes about Man
. . . The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
All government--indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act--is founded on compromise and barter.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labour of the industrious.
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees.
Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
You can't run a government solely on a business basis ... Government should be human. It should have a heart.
Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.
Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard, and many a time Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil.
It is a pleasure appropriate to man, for him to save a fellow-man, and gratitude is acquired in no better way. [Lat., Conveniens homini est hominem servare voluptas. Et melius nulla quaeritur arte favor.]
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
Let the man, who would be grateful, think of repaying a kindness, even while receiving it. [Lat., Qui gratus futurus est statim dum accipit de reddendo cogitet.]
A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Nothing tires a man more than to be grateful all the time.
By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave, In a vale in the land of Moab, There lies a lonely grave; But no man built that sepulcher, And no man saw it e'er, For the angels of God upturned the sod And laid the dead man there.
Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down; Where a green grassy turf is all I crave, With here and there a violet bestrown, Fast by a brook or fountain's murmuring wave; And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave.
And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
