Greatest Man Quotes

• 

  The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Life, Strength

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.166, A&C Black

  294 Copy quote

  Show source

• The weak can never forgive.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strength, Being Strong, Forgiveness

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.155, A&C Black

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Men, Years, Long

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1900). “Tributes and miscellany”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution.

  Seneca the Younger

  Greatness, Men, Resolution

  5 Copy quote

• The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution; who resists to sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.

  Seneca the Younger

  Greatness, Men, Temptation

  14 Copy quote

• A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Interesting, Smallest

  Thomas Carlyle (1851). “Works”, p.6

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things.

  Robert E. Howard

  Men

  Robert E. Howard (2007). “The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2: Grim Lands”, p.23, Del Rey

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And I loved Frank Lloyd Wright. I think he was the greatest man I have ever met in my life.

  Anthony Quinn

  Men, Thinking, Mets

  9 Copy quote

• You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Love You, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Greatness, Men, Taste

  7 Copy quote

• I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which "die and make no sign"; there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Hero, Greatness, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Loyalty, Party, Men

  5 Copy quote

• I do believe he’s the greatest, but forget about boxing - give that to Joe Louis, or somebody - I believe he’s one of the greatest men I’ve ever met.

  George Foreman

  Believe, Men, Boxing

  15 Copy quote

• Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd.

  John Milton

  Men, Rocks, Wrecks

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.71

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

  Henry Taylor

  Men, World, Knows

  Sir Henry Taylor (1834). “Philip Van Artvelde: A Dramatic Romance. In Two Parts”, p.41

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man can never come up to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.

  Margaret Fuller

  Men, Spirit, Standards

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke”, p.65

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Eye, Ambition, Men

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1967). “Sept. 1964-May 1949”

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.

  Blaise Pascal

  Independent, Men, Giving

  Blaise Pascal (1828). “Thoughts on religion, and other subjects”, p.109

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography.Boswell was one ofthesmallest menthat ever lived and he has beaten them all.

  Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild

  Men, Biographies, Beaten

  15 Copy quote

• A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Party, Men, Spirit

  9 Copy quote

• The landlord of colonial days may not have been the greatest man in town, but he was certainly the best-known, often the most popular, and ever the most picturesque and cheerful figure.

  Alice Morse Earle

  Men, Cheerful, May

  Alice Morse Earle (2016). “Stage-coach and Tavern Days”, p.46, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing is all a lottery -- I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age.

  Tobias Smollett

  Writing, Men, Age

  Tobias Smollett, Sir Walter Scott (1835). “Select works of Tobias Smollett ...: With a memoir of the life and writings of the author”, p.312

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Book, Men, Years

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest men May ask a foolish question, now and then.

  John Wolcot

  Men, May, Foolish

  John Wolcot (1812). “The works of Peter Pindar”, p.460

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Although he reputedly hated the label of 'guru', Peter Drucker was, by any standards, the greatest management guru the world has yet seen. In 1996, the McKinsey Quarterly journal described him as the 'the one guru to whom other gurus kowtow' and Robert Heller described him as 'the greatest man in the history of management', praise indeed for a man who described himself as 'just an old journalist'.

  Peter Drucker

  Men, Labels, World

  4 Copy quote