Men Quotes

Nine men in ten are would be suicides.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Bad men are full of repentance.