Quotation Collection

Ambition can creep as well as soar. Edmund Burke

• ambition

The less open-minded someone is, the more open-mouthed they tend to be. Anonymous

• speech
• flexibility

If you are ruled by your mind, you are a king; if by your body, a slave. Cato

• discipline
• desire

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. David Hume

• government

The mind requires some relaxation, and cannot always support its bent to care and industry. David Hume

• rest
• leisure

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality. Sir Winston Churchill

• morals
• courage

Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive. Jack Donovan

• men

Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Norman Mailer

• men
• honor

It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both. Blaise Pascal

• greatness

The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men—between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant—is energy, invincible determination—a purpose once fixed, and then—death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it. Thomas Fowell Buxton

• determination
• purpose

This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself? Orison Marden

• character

The lesson taught at this point by human experience is simply this, that the man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down. This rule may appear somewhat harsh, but in its general application and operation it is wise, just and beneficent. I know of no other rule which can be substituted for it without bringing social chaos. Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within. Frederick Douglass

• independence
• self reliance

The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood. W. G. Simms

• manners
• people skills

This combination of active and contemplative virtues is one of the most enduring themes in three thousand years of experience of what it means to be a man. Waller Newell

• action
• thought

A man is one whose body has been trained to be the ready servant of his mind; whose passions are trained to be the servants of his will; who enjoys the beautiful, loves truth, hates wrong, loves to do good, and respects others as himself. John Ruskin

• discipline
• beauty
• respect

When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they'd need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, and they still judge one another according to the demands of that role as a guardian in a gang struggling for survival against encroaching doom. Everything that is specifically about being a man—not merely a person—has to do with that role. Jack Donovan

• security
• men

It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases to struggle, which remains inactive, rapidly deteriorates. It is a struggle toward an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further, which develops manhood and character. James Terry White

• self improvement
• laziness

Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors. Jack Donovan

• responsibility
• honor

Duty is the essence of manhood. George Patton

• duty

Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men. Elisabeth Elliott

• women
• men

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. Clive Staples Lewis

• honor
• virtue

There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble. Sam Keen

• associates
• friends
• purpose

If boys don't learn, men won't know. Douglas Wilson

• children

A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all. Camille Paglia

• men
• women

Adversity toughens manhood, and the characteristic of the good or the great man is not that he has been exempt from the evils of life, but that he has surmounted them. Patrick Henry

• adversity

Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction. Jack Donovan

• ideas
• action
• thought

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it. Walter Bagehot

• history

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician. I should like to be, also, something of a man. Theodore Parker

• focus
• occupation

If you cannot examine your thoughts, you have no choice but to think them, however silly they may be. Richard Mitchell

• thought
• reason
• philosophy

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it. This is knowledge. Confucius

• knowledge

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule. F. A. Hayek

• morals
• socialism