A Quote by Napoleon Bonaparte
As a rule it is circumstances that make men.
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Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances.
Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbrinding, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.
The democratic rule that all men are equal is sometimes confused with the quite opposite idea that all men are the same and that any man can be substituted for any other so that his differences make no difference. The two are not at all the same. The democratic rule that all men are equal means that men's being different cannot be made a basis for special privilege or for the invidious advantage of one man over another; equality, under the democratic rule, is the freedom and opportunity of each individual to be fully and completely his different self. Democracy means the right to be different.
For me, the sexiest men don't know they're drop-dead gorgeous. Not that I'd ever rule out a pot-bellied plumber in the right circumstances.
10 Rules for Being Human: Rule #1 - You will receive a body. Rule #2 - You will be presented with lessons. Rule #3 - There are no mistakes, only lessons. Rule #4 - The lesson is repeated until learned. Rule #5 - Learning does not end. Rule #6 - "There" is no better than "here". Rule #7 - Others are only mirrors of you. Rule #8 - What you make of your life is up to you. Rule #9 - Your answers lie inside of you. Rule #10 - You will forget all this at birth.
We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within.
Given any rule, however ?fundamental? or ?necessary? for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite.
That is very fine; but it is impossible to make the men perfect; the men will always remain the same as they are now; and no legislation will make a man have more presence of mind, or, I believe, make him more cautious; and besides that, the next time such an accident occurs, the circumstances will be so different, that the instructions given to the men, in consequence of the former accident, will not apply.
Given any rule, however "fundamental" or "necessary" for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite. For example, there are circumstances when it is advisable to introduce, elaborate and defend ad hoc hypotheses, or hypotheses which contradict well-established and generally accepted experimental results, or hypotheses whose content is smaller than the content of the existing and empirically adequate alternative, or self-inconsistent hypotheses, and so on.
The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions. A type of virtue is first formed by circumstances, and men afterwards make it the model upon which their theories are framed.
Those who make antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make false windows for the sake of symmetry. Their rule is not to speak justly, but to make accurate figures.
I love the power women have. I think women rule the world because they rule men. Manipulating men - that's our job. That's what we're on the planet for.
I can imagine in a century or two that rule by women will be seen as a better bet than rule by men. What's wrong with men is that they tend to look for the violent solution. Women don't.
The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men.
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