Quotes: Man.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Man
Man is the masterpiece of creation.
Man 176 Chorus: Creation is a marvel/ And man its masterpiece. Sophocles. Antigone.

Man is a god-detested monster.
Man 76 Oedipus: Hurry off the monster: that deepest damned and god-detested man. Sophocles. Oedipus the King.

Man is both good and evil, god and human.
Man 51 Man...is also Homo duplex...partakes of evil and of good, of god and of man. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Man would kill for ideas and in the next generation forget what he killed for.
Man 256 He would kill for shadowy ideas more ferociously than other creatures kill for food, then, in a generation or less, forget what bloody dream had so oppressed him. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

If man self-destructs it’s too bad he will take the rest of nature with him.
Man 261 If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives…it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Man has harnessed the energy of the sun and threatens the lives and happiness of his unborn descendants.
Man 284 He [man] holds the heat of suns within his hands and threatens with it both the lives and the happiness of his unborn descendants. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Man is always searching for his true nature.
Man 300 ...a play in which man was destined always to be a searcher, and it would be his true nature he would seek. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Men are contradictory; we believe what we disbelieve and do what we condemn.
Man 302 Montaigne: “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.” Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Few are saints or total monsters.
Man 304 Few of us can be saints; few of us are total monsters. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Man would be great, happy, perfect, and the object of love, but he realizes he is little, miserable, full of imperfections, with faults that merit only aversion and contempt.
Man xxxi Pascal: Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. Hoffer, The True Believer

JFK: Man is the most extraordinary computer, with judgment, nerve and ability to learn from experience.
Man 593 To those who argued that instruments alone could do the job [of going to the moon], he [Kennedy] replied that man was “the most extraordinary computer of them all…[whose] judgment, nerve and [ability to] learn from experience still make him unique” among the instruments. Sorenson, Kennedy

Man has the need to transcend himself.
Man 104 …man feels the inner need to transcend himself. Pope John Paul II, Threshold

Man’s capacities have never been measured; precedents don’t help since so little has been tried.
Man 330 But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what we can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Thoreau, Walden.

Plato: Man is a biped without feathers.
Man 441 …Plato’s definition of a man,--a biped without feathers. Thoreau, Walden.

Man has an instinct for the higher, spiritual life and also an instinct for a primitive, savage life.
Man 490 I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. Thoreau, Walden.

Foolish people think every person is the same.
Man 27 The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. Emerson, Nature.

Man has unlimited possibilities.
Man 41 Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Emerson, Nature.

People are ruined gods.
Man 45 A man is a god in ruins. Emerson, Nature.

It takes a whole society to put together a complete man.
Man 54 ...you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Emerson, The American Scholar.

People are neither willing or able to help others.
Man 70 “I learned,” said the melancholy Pestalozzi, “that no man in God’s wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.” Emerson, The American Scholar.

All people are capable of sublime thoughts and value the few hours of real life.
Man 89 ...all men have sublime thoughts;...all men value the few real hours of life. Emerson, Divinity College Address.

Man’s mind is the final riddle.
Man xx Man’s mind is the final, unlocked riddle. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

All men need security, identity and stimulation.
Man xx …what men need and must have are three things: security, identity, and stimulation, and not always in that order. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

A man’s hand is not just a single organ; it is an instrument that creates other instruments.
Man 6 For the most intelligent of animals is the one who would put the most organs to use; and the hand is not to be looked on as one organ but as many; for it is, as it were, an instrument for further instruments. Aristotle, Parts of Animals. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is at the same time the frailest and most arrogant of creatures.
Man 11 The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant. Montaigne, Essays: “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is the glory, jest and riddle of the world.
Man 14 He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,/ …In doubt his mind or body to prefer,/ Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;/ Alike in ignorance…/ Whether he thinks too little, or too much:/ …Created half to rise, and half to fall;/ Great lord of all things, yet prey to all;/ …The glory, jest, and riddle of the world. Pope, Essay on Man. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is a degraded mass of animated dust who is put to shame by the brute creation.
Man 17 Oh, Man! Thou feeble tenant of an hour,/ Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,…/ Degraded mass of animated dust;/ Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,/ Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit;/ …Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Byron, Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts.
Man 20 In many respects man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. W. James, Psychology. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is the only creature to prey systematically on its own species.
Man 21 Man…the only one that preys systematically on its own species. W. James, Remarks…. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Man is subject by his humanity to pain and sorrow and adds to that his cruel treatment of others
Man 510 Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another. Addison, 9/13/1711. The Spectator.

Man is simply a part of nature.
Man 3 Man is embedded in nature.
Animals have many of the characteristics of man and even something equivalent to intelligence. [If you define intelligence as learning from experience.]

Animals resemble men physically and emotionally.
Man and animals 6 For just as we pointed our resemblances in the physical organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness or fierceness, mildness or cross temper, courage, or timidity, fear or confidence, high spirit or low cunning, and, with regard to intelligence, something equivalent to sagacity. Aristotle, History of Animals. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Animals live only in the present, with little perception of the past or future. [I don’t agree. Animals learn from experience.]
Man and animals 7 The most evident difference between man and animal is this: the beast, inasmuch as it is largely motivated by the senses and with little perception of the past or future, lives only for the present. Cicero, De Officiis. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Animals are like clocks which inform us of the hour, better than we can judge without them.
Man and animals 12 They [animals] act by force of nature and by springs like a clock, which tells better what the hour is than our judgment can inform us. Descartes. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Men are different from animals because they preserve their past experiences.
Man and animals 21 Man differs from the lower animals because he preserves his past experiences. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Colonies of insects act as a single organism. [“Swimmy.”]
Man and Animals 127 The idea that colonies of social insects are somehow equivalent to vast, multi-creatured organisms, possessing a collective intelligence and a gift for adaptation far superior to the sum of the individual inhabitants [was suggested by] William Morton Wheeler, who proposed the term “superorganism” to describe the arrangement. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

Analogies are made between human and insect societies, but the insects do not develop a social tradition based on the accumulated experience of many generations.
Man and animals 57 It is not surprising that many analogies have been drawn between the social insects and human societies...; however, these are misleading or meaningless, for the behavior of insects is rigidly stereotyped and determined by innate instructive mechanisms; they show little or no insight or capacity for learning, and they lack the ability to develop a social tradition based on the accumulated experience of many generations. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

Human behavior is not mindless and stereotyped and coded out by our genomes, and we do not engage compulsively in tasks. [A half-truth?]
Man and animals 88 We are not mindless nor is our day-to-day behavior coded out to the last detail by our genomes, nor do we seem to be engaged together, compulsively, in any single, universal, stereotyped task analogous to the construction of a nest. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

The wasp cannot consider alternative methods of doing things. [Judging by the behavior of squirrels, I question this assertion.]
Man and animals 93 …the wasp cannot imagine any other way of doing things. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

Man, unlike animals, stands straight and can look to the heavens.
Man and God 9 Man has not been created stooping towards the earth, like the irrational animals; but his bodily form, erect and looking heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that are above. Augustine, City of God. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Was there a time when man and the things of nature knew each other more intimately?
Man and Nature 861 And, after all, the idea of [the Faun] may have been no dream, but rather a poet’s reminiscence of a period when man’s affinity with Nature...and his fellowship with every living thing [was] more intimate and dear. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

The American Indians believed that everything in nature had a soul.
Man and nature 169 The Americans [Indians] believe that all creatures have souls, not only men and women, but brutes, vegetables, nay even the most inanimate things as sticks and stones. Addison, 5/4/1711. The Spectator.

Men are like flies to the gods who kill us for their sport.
Man and the gods 11 As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,/ They kill us for their sport. Shakespeare, Lear. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

Evolution has shaped man as a unique creature who will not be duplicated in other conditions.
Man evolution 116 That shape [of man] is the evolutionary product of a strange, long wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely and identically human is likely ever to come that way again. Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Man is a fire that consumes himself.
Man fire 45 [Man] ... is himself a consuming fire. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Man has escaped from the animals’ eternal present into a knowledge of past and future.
Man instinct 87 Man had escaped out of the eternal present of the animal world into a knowledge of past and future. Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Man has created an invisible world of ideas, beliefs, habits and customs that replace the instincts of animals.
Man instincts 65 Creature of dream, he [man] has created an invisible world of ideas, beliefs, habits, and customs which buttress him about and replace for him the precise instincts of the lower creatures. Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Luxuries are not indispensable and are hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Man luxury 334 Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Thoreau, Walden.

Man, the user of tools, needs to be careful not to become a tool himself.
Man tool 269 Man, the tool user, grows convinced that he is himself only useful as a tool. Eiseley, The Star Thrower.