Elihu Root Men Quotations

Men do not fail; they give up trying.

The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection.

The limitation upon this mode of promoting peace lies in the fact that it consists in an appeal to the civilized side of man, while war is the product of forces proceeding from man's original savage nature.

There is so much of good in human nature that men grow to like each other upon better acquaintance, and this points to another way in which we may strive to promote the peace of the world.

Gradually, everything that happens in the world is coming to be of interest everywhere in the world, and, gradually, thoughtful men and women everywhere are sitting in judgment upon the conduct of all nations.

Cruelty to men and to the lower animals as well, which would have passed unnoticed a century ago, now shocks the sensibilities and is regarded as wicked and degrading.

The law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.

Nobody knows through how many thousands of years fighting men have made a place for themselves while the weak and peaceable have gone to the wall.

Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot.

I observe that there are two entirely different theories according to which individual men seek to get on in the world. One theory leads a man to pull down everybody around him in order to climb up on them to a higher place. The other leads a man to help everybody around him in order that he may go up with them.

To eradicate or modify or curb the tendencies which thus survive among civilized men is not a matter of intellectual conviction or training.