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Great Men Quotes

Browse 1131 quotes about Great Men.

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Great Men Quotes

“Intemperance is a dangerous companion. It throws many people off their guard, betrays them to a great many indecencies, to ruinous passions, to disadvantages in fortune; makes them discover secrets, drive foolish bargains, engage in play, and often to stagger from the tavern to the stews.”

PeoplePlayPassionSecretDangerousFortuneFoolishGreat MenCompanionBetrayBargainsDisadvantagesDrunkennessStewTavernsIntemperance
Book:Essays upon several moral subjects
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“As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.”

MightCultureCommunicationMassEthicsTraditionalGreat MenGiftedSuperioritySanctionsInferiorityPopular CulturePseudoMass Communication
Book:The Corrupted Giant: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals
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“If the title of a great man ought to be reserved for him who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle--this title will not be denied to Washington.”

IfsMenCountryJusticePrinciplesSacrificeGreatnessOughtIntegrityGloryIndependenceProsperityVicesTitlesGreat MenExpensesDeniedReserved
Book:The Life of George Washington by Jared Sparks
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“A great man is a gift, in some measure a revelation of God. A great man, living for high ends, is the divinest thing that can be seen on earth. The value and interest of history are derived chiefly from the lives and services of the eminent men whom it commemorates. Indeed, without these, there would be no such thing as history, and the progress of a nation would be little worth recording, as the march of a trading caravan across a desert.”

MenLittlesEndsWould BeEarthValuesNationsInterestProgressGreatnessDesertRevelationsGreat MenMarchTradingCaravans
Book:A Memorial of Daniel Webster: From the City of Boston
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“The Afghansti have caused a great many people a great deal of grief and have themselves suffered - for a lie, let us not forget - the same ways we in the United States have caused much suffering in Southeast Asia, and have also suffered much in return, also for a lie. It was no small betrayal, no small lesson for a man to learn at the age of 19. Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart -the darkness that is always with us.”

PeopleMenWayHeartStatesHomeAgeLyingSufferingHumanityDarkForgetUnitedDealsGriefDarknessUnited StatesReturnLessonsSoldierBetrayalGreat MenAsiaLiberatedDark PlacesSoutheast AsiaReturning Home
Author:Larry Heinemann
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“Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.”

MenFirstsWellsKindLittlesWholePleasureQualityEffectsTalentFashionGreatnessGeniusAssumingAll KindsGreat MenEfficientPossessedGiftedVentureConstructsBoastSeriousnessDazzlingWorkmenGiftedness
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them”

MenWorldFoundIndividualEffortPlayerGreatnessSkillsChessTrialsPermanentGreat MenDisplayConstructsConfinedTrophiesMomentaryChess PlayersIndividual Effort
Author:William Hazlitt
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“Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy.”

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Author:Gertrude Atherton
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“As to the Christian religion, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favor from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias on the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer.”

MenWorldHas BeensChristianStrongSidesNumbersChristianitySeriousBalanceEvidenceConvincedLawyerBelieverFavorsFirmGreat MenConsiderationBiasAccustomedNewtonInfidelIsaacRecluse
Book:Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales
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“All other great men are valued for their lives; He, above all, for His death, around which mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man are reconciled; for the cross is the magnet which sends the electric current through the telegraph between earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with living, harmonious, and saving truth.”

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Book:Evidences of Revealed Religion
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“It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.”

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Author:Joan Didion
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