Great Men Quotes - Page 24

• I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.

  John Ruskin

  Greatness, Men, Gold

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• Great men undertake great things because they are great; fools, because they think them easy.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Greatness, Men, Thinking

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• The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.

  Charles Henry Fowler

  Teacher, Greatness, Men

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 217), 1895.

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• The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp upon his race.

  Samuel Smiles

  Greatness, Men, Race

  Samuel Smiles (1910). “Character. Repr”

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• Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Life, Leadership, Book

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers”, p.148

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• A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Greatness, Men, Clean

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1871). “Poetical Works”, p.405

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• What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Mediocre, Nations

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• Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.

  Max Beerbohm

  Men

  Max Beerbohm (2006). “And Even Now”, p.93, 1st World Publishing

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• There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.

  Stephen King

  Suicide, Way, Commit

  Stephen King (1990). “The Stand”, Signet Book

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• If, like Harry Keogh, I could talk to the dead - God, there are an awful lot of people I would like to speak to! Not least my father. Being in the army for 22 years, I didnt see enough of him, and I know there are a great many things I could have learned from him.

  Brian Lumley

  Father, Army, Years

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• In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Color, People, Harvard

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• When a great man has become petrified, and everyone begins to proclaim his greatness, he has already turned into a puppet.

  Lu Xun

  Greatness, Men, Puppets

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• It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with the superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are true levellers. They give to all, who faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race.

  William Ellery Channing

  Spiritual, Book, Communication

  William Ellery CHANNING (1839). “Self-Culture. An address introductory to the Franklin lectures, delivered at Boston. 1838”, p.16

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• Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, "where annual elections end, there slavery begins." These great men ... should be (chosen) once a year-Like bubbles on the sea of matter bourne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.

  John Adams

  Humility, Men, Years

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• We do not behave as if we believed that the affairs of our world were significant enough for the intervention of great men.

  Paul Goodman

  Men, Our World, Affair

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153), 1956.

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• To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

  Paul Goodman

  Powerful, Men, People

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153-154), 1956.

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• I would gladly say 'Heil Hitler!' and at once part company with him, realizing what a pitiable insult it is to such a great man to try to flatter him with such an imitation which he has always disdained. His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing.

  William Joyce

  Men, Trying, Germany

  "National Socialism Now". Pamphlet issued by the National Socialist League, circa 1938.

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• A very great man once said you should love your enemies and that's not a bad piece of advice. We can love them but, by God, that doesn't mean we're not going to fight them.

  Norman Schwarzkopf

  Love You, Mean, Fighting

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• God is one among several hypotheses to account for the phenomena of human destiny, and it is now proving to be an inadequate hypothesis. To a great many people, including myself, this realization is a great relief, both intellectually and morally. It frees us to explore the real phenomena for which the God hypothesis seeks to account, to define them more accurately, and to work for a more satisfying set of concepts.

  Julian Huxley

  God, Religious, Real

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• It's a little hard for me to stand behind the walls of the great mansion and play rock and roll star. I feel the need to give back.

  Jon Bon Jovi

  Stars, Wall, Rocks

  "Jon Bon Jovi The Businessman". www.huffingtonpost.com. Ocotber 6, 2008.

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• I think 'Elbow' were considered successful even before [2008's] Seldom Seen Kid because we were living off the band. We have a great manager who keeps our coffers topped off, and we give ourselves a sensible wage with a view to having three fallow years between records. We always make sure we have enough money to make a record and not be pressured time-wise.

  Guy Garvey

  Wise, Kids, Successful

  Source: www.spin.com

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• There are obviously a great many ways to organize some fraction of the material in a life.

  Marge Piercy

  Way, Fractions, Organize

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• I think having a great range of experiences in my life had helped me as a writer, particularly a writer of fiction. I have known a great many different sorts of people in different situations, and I have a notion how very well of badly people can behave in times of stress or danger or violence.

  Marge Piercy

  Stress, Thinking, People

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• Ferguson, as a manager, and Ken, as a director, are very similar. One's a great manager, the other a great director, but both have a lot of humanity and a lot of humility. They always give you the energy... with Ferguson when we played a game it was like it was his first game - he's so passionate and gives you ambition every time. And Ken works the same way - they're very similar.

  Eric Cantona

  Ambition, Humility, Games

  "Looking For Eric - Eric Cantona interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• It is this quality, the power of seeing order in apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men.

  John Chadwick

  Men, Order, Confusion

  John Chadwick (2014). “The Decipherment of Linear B”, p.4, Cambridge University Press

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