Samuel Johnson Quotes on Mankind (13 Quotes)

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur so many immediate evils are

Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind, from China to Peru.

So many qualities are indeed requisite to the possibility of friendship, and so many accidents must concur to its rise and its continuance, that the greatest part of mankind content themselves without it, and supply its place as they can, with intere.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. . . . There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind