quotations about men
Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.
YASMINA REZA
The God of Carnage
There is so much that is deaf and dumb in man, and so much that is paralyzed, so much that is shrunken, that nothing short of a miraculous touch of re-creation can make them at death perfect beings.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Born, the Man assumes the name and image of humanity, and becomes in all things like unto other men who dwell upon the earth. Their hard lot becomes his, and his, in turn, becomes the lot of all who shall come after him. Drawn on inexorably by time, it is not given him to see the next rung on which his faltering foot shall fall. Bounded in knowledge, it is not given him to foretell what each succeeding hour, what each succeeding minute, shall have in store for him. In blind nescience, in an agony of foreboding, in a whirl of hopes and fears, he completes the cycle of an iron destiny.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
Man is still a predatory animal, and we're only kidding ourselves if we think we're the pinnacle of evolution and civilization.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
If a girl as smart as yourself really wants to dig into the matter and truly get to know the nature of men and therefore boys, let me save you a lot of time and effort that you would otherwise spend trying to evaluate their intellectual motivations, their emotional states, and the reasons behind their inexplicable behavior. The thing to do is to take the anthropological view, try to concentrate on just how it is that they develop into the people they are: that is to say, thinly veiled sperm distributors. It will open up a wealth of answers. An ocean of understanding. And all you have to do is look down.
GWEN MACSAI
Lipshtick
Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.
BOB NEWHART
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This
I take it that "gentleman" is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as "a man", we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow men, but in relation to himself, -- to life -- to time -- to eternity. A cast-away lonely as Robinson Crusoe -- a prisoner immured in a dungeon for life -- nay, even a saint in Patmos, has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as "a man". I am rather weary of this word "gentlemanly" which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often too with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun "man", and the adjective "manly" are unacknowledged.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
North and South
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch--a rope over an abyss.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Men are like avocados. They're not ripe, they're not ripe, they're not ripe.... Then they're suddenly very ripe, and then they go bad.
RACHEL RACZKA
"Will people start becoming single again in their mid-30s? Don't count on it.", Washington Post, August 8, 2017
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
JOHN GRAY
Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus
Testosterone is a great equalizer, it turns all men into morons.
RUPERT GILES
"The Pack", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.
RITA MAE BROWN
Sudden Death
The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.
OSCAR WILDE
The Wit of Oscar Wilde
If Man be the Index or Epitomy of the World, as Philosophers tell us, we have only to read our selves well to be learned in it.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Men aren't allowed to have self-esteem, because we're already supposed to have all the power.... But most men earn less than they want, barely the minimum wage. They're drones. They do stuff they don't want to do to support their families, and they're not sure why they do it. They don't know what they're doing half the time, and any time we stick up for ourselves, we're pigs because we don't know how to articulate our frustrations and joys.
TIM ALLEN
Parade Magazine, October 27, 2002
Real men don't use instructions, son. Besides, this is just the manufacturer's opinion on how to put this together.
TIM ALLEN
Home Improvement
Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home