A Quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
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Great men are excellent topics of conversation, but the superior man, the superior men, the masters, the universal spirits on horseback, have to stop and search their memories merely to know who these so-called great men might be. And so the great man is left with the crowd, the worthless majority...for his admirers.
Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
A man is not merely a man but a man among men, in a world of men. Being good at being a man has more to do with a man’s ability to succeed with men and within groups of men than it does with a man’s relationship to any woman or any group of women. When someone tells a man to be a man, they are telling him to be more like other men, more like the majority of men, and ideally more like the men who other men hold in high regard.
People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white, I answer, in the words of the song, most emphatically, 'No.' How do I know what I might be if I were a white man? I might be a sand-hog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day. I might be a street-car conductor at $12 or $15 a week. There is many a white man less fortunate and less well equipped than I am. In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient - in America.
When I meet a historian who cannot think that there have been great men, great men moreover in politics, I feel myself in the presence of a bad historian, and there are times when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill -- whether they can see that, no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains quite simply, a great man.
The effect on men has been very bad, too, of the omission of women's history, because men have been given the impression that they're much more important in the world than they actually are. It has fostered illusions of grandeur in every man that are unwarranted. If you can think as a man that everything great in the world and its civilization was created by men, then naturally you have to look down on women. And naturally, you have to have different aspirations for your sons and for your daughters.
There have been great men with little of what we call education. There have been many small men with a great deal of learning. There has never been a great people who did not possess great learning.
I've always had a man's mindset, and that's why I mostly have men friends, and that's why I've been around so many men. I've always been a tomboy. And any man that knows me will tell you I'm not a girly girl.
I've always had a man's mindset, and that's why I mostly have men friends and that's why I've been around so many men. I've always been a tomboy. And any man that knows me will tell you I'm not a girly girl.
Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws.
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.
I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart.
Some might say that sunshine follows thunderGo and tell it to the man who cannot shineSome might say that we should never ponderOn our thoughts today cos they will sway over timeSome might say they don't believe in heaven Go and tell it to the man who lives in hellSome might say you get what you've been givenIf you don't get yours I won't get mine as well
Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?
In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.
There isn't any question about Washington's greatness. If his administration had been a failure, there would have been no United States. A lesser man couldn't have done it.... Washington was both a great administrator and a great leader, a truly great man in every way.
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