Montagu Quotes & Sayings

The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being. — Ashley Montagu

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become. — Ashley Montagu

The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement. — Ashley Montagu

It goes far towards reconciling me to being a woman, when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one. — Mary Wortley Montagu

People never write calmly but when they write indifferently. — Mary Wortley Montagu

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The government here is entirely in the hands of the army. The Grand Signor [Ottoman Sultan], with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as any of his subjects, and trembles at a janissary's frown. — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Ircumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society. — Ashley Montagu

Civility costs nothing and buys everything — Mary Wortley Montagu

I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising. — Mary Wortley Montagu

It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record - and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the 'Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.' Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization. — Ashley Montagu

In short I will part with anything for you but you. — Mary Wortley Montagu

There have been some medical schools in which somewhere along the assembly line, a faculty member has informed the students, not so much by what he said but by what he did, that there is an intimate relation between curing and caring. — Ashley Montagu

All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever. — Ashley Montagu

No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I give myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future. — Mary Wortley Montagu

How many thousands ... earnestly seeking what they do not want, while they neglect the real blessings in their possession
I mean the innocent gratification of their senses, which is all we can properly call our own. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis. — Ben Macintyre

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game. — Ben Macintyre

The screech-owl, with ill-boding cry, Portends strange things, old women say; Stops every fool that passes by, And frights the school-boy from his play. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone. — Ashley Montagu

It is the function of women to teach men how to be human. — Ashley Montagu

The way I change my life is to act as if I am the person I really want to be. — Ashley Montagu

It is very unreasonable of people to expect one should be at home, because one is in the house. Of all privileges, that of invisibility is the most valuable. — Elizabeth Montagu

Philosophy is the toil which can never tire persons engaged in it. All ways are strewn with roses, and the farther you go, the more enchanting objects appear before you and invite you on. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The Good Book - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined. — Ashley Montagu

There would be no value in worship services and symbols did they not, preserved in their Purity and Beauty, serve as aids to right living. — Lily Montagu

A propos of Distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish your selfe here. The Small Pox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old Women who make it their business to perform the Operation. — Mary Wortley Montagu

It's in no way my interest (according to the common acceptance of that word) to convince the world of their errors; that is, I shall get nothing from it but the private satisfaction of having done good to mankind, and I know nobody that reckons that satisfaction any part of their interest. — Mary Wortley Montagu

In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message. — Ashley Montagu

Human communication, 'as the saying goes, is a clash of symbols' it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than media and messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a deeper need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in short, the essential human connection. — Ashley Montagu

The word "necessary" is miserably applied. It disordereth families, and overturneth government, by being so abused. Remember that children and fools want everything because they want judgment to distinguish; and therefore there is no stronger evidence of a crazy understanding than the making too large a catalogue of things necessary. — Charles Montagu, 1st Earl Of Halifax

She kindly laments that I am not of the party, and to be sure I honour great ladies, and I admire great wits, but I am of the same opinion in regard to assemblies that is held concerning oysters, that they are never good in a month that has not the letter R in it. — Elizabeth Montagu

The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease. — Ashley Montagu

Any form of corporal punishment or 'spanking' is a violent attack upon another human being's integrity. The effect remains with the victim forever and becomes an unforgiving part of his or hier personality
a massive frustration resulting in a hostility which will seek expression in later life in violent acts towards others. The sooner we understand that love and gentleness are the only kinds of called-far behavior towards children, the better. The child, especially, learns to become the kind of human being that he or she has experienced. This should be fully understood by all caregivers. — Ashley Montagu

I am in perfect health, and hear it said I look better than ever I did in my life, which is one of those lies one is always glad to hear. — Mary Wortley Montagu

In Victorian times the purpose of life was to develop a personality once and for all and then stand on it. — Ashley Montagu

To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom. — Ashley Montagu

I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a dTgovt given by satiety. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The family is the basis of society. As the family is, so is the society, and it is human beings who make a family-not the quantity of them, but the quality of them. — Ashley Montagu

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof. — Ashley Montagu

Forgive what you can't excuse ... — Mary Wortley Montagu

The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit. — Ashley Montagu

People wish their enemies dead - but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone! — Mary Wortley Montagu

It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison. — Ashley Montagu

It is the mark of the cultured man that he is aware of the fact that equality is an ethical and not a biological principle — Ashley Montagu

Religion urges us to fight evil as contrary to the Divine Law. It urges us to combat abject misery, sin and disease because God is. In His name we can work, as we believe in co-operation with Him, since through Him goodness must ultimately prevail. — Lily Montagu

The whole of life is a journey toward youthful old age, toward self-contemplation, love, gaiety, and, in a fundamental sense, the most gratifying time of our lives ... "Old age" should be a harvest time when the riches of life are reaped and enjoyed, while it continues to be a special period for self-development and expansion. — Ashley Montagu

You will find many a creature by earth, air, and water, that is more beautiful than a woman. — Elizabeth Montagu

See how that pair of billing doves With open murmurs own their loves And, heedless of censorious eyes, Pursue their unpolluted joys: No fears of future want molest The downy quiet of their nest. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I always wish to find great virtues where there are great talents, and to love what I admire ... — Elizabeth Montagu

It is more to my personal happiness and advantage to indulge the love and admiration of excellence, than to cherish a secret envy of it. — Elizabeth Montagu

[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters? — Agnes Repplier

Only a mother knows a mother's fondness. — Mary Wortley Montagu

You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names. — Mary Wortley Montagu

There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Because women live creatively, they rarely experience the need to depict or write about that which to them is a primary experience and which men know only at a second remove. Women create naturally, men create artificially. — Ashley Montagu

Love, for too many men in our time, consists of sleeping with a seductive woman, one who is properly endowed with the right distribution of curves and conveniences and one upon whom a permanent lien has been acquired through the institution of marriage. — Ashley Montagu

Girls marry for love. Boys marry because of a chronic irritation that causes them to gravitate in the direction of objects with certain curvilinear properties. — Ashley Montagu

The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness. — Ashley Montagu

To paraphrase something the anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said, the way I change my life is to act as if I'm the person I want to be. This is, to me, the simplest, wisest advice you can give anyone. When you wake up and act like a loving person, you realize not only that you are altered, but that the people around you are also transformed, because everybody is changed by the reception of this love ... — Bernie Siegel

The outrages of the powerful, the insolence of the rich, scorn of the proud, and malice of the uncharitable, all beating against the broken spirit of the unfortunate. — Elizabeth Montagu

Do we have the right to rear animals in order to kill them so that we may feed appetites in which we have been artificially conditioned from childhood? — Ashley Montagu

Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Indeed such is Montagu's enthusiasm, and so engaging is his undisguised admiration, that one is almost obligated to overlook the aside on page 311 where Montagu acknowledges indirectly that Tyson was almost entirely in error in all of his conclusions. — Richard T. Nash

[T]here cannot be a more certain symptom of the approaching ruin of a State than when a firm adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit, and all the qualifications requisite to a right discharge of every employment, are reduced to that single standard. — Edward Wortley Montagu

A face is too slight a foundation for happiness. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion. — Mary Wortley Montagu

We have all our playthings. Happy are they who are contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The main principle by which human beings must guide the future course of their development is love. — Ashley Montagu

Men are vile inconstant toads. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Content is to the mind like moss to a tree; it bindeth it up so as to stop its growth. — Charles Montagu, 1st Earl Of Halifax

As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof. — Ashley Montagu

I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex, and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this usefull invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our Doctors very particularly about it, if I knew anyone of 'em that I thought had Virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of Revenue for the good of Mankind, but that Distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their Resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good, riches being another word for power. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings. — Mary Wortley Montagu

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind. — Mary Wortley Montagu

It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so) without considering that nothing is beautiful that is misplaced. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Hatred is love frustrated. — Ashley Montagu

My health is so often impaired that I begin to be as weary of it as mending old lace; when it is patched in one place, it breaks out in another. — Mary Wortley Montagu

He that spareth in everything is an inexcusable niggard. He that spareth in nothing is an inexcusable madman. The mean is to spare in what is least necessary, and to lay out more liberally in what is most required in our several circumstances. — Charles Montagu, 1st Earl Of Halifax

It's by what you do that you communicate to others that you are deeply involved in their well being. — Ashley Montagu

Intellect without humanity is not good enough ... what the world is suffering from at the present time is not so much an overabundance of intellect as an insufficiency of humanity. — Ashley Montagu

The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice. — Ashley Montagu

To always be loved one must ever be agreeable. — Mary Wortley Montagu

The familiarities of the gaming-table contribute very much to the decay of politeness ... The pouts and quarrels that naturally arise from disputes must put an end to all complaisance, or even good will towards one another. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Water, whether still or in motion, has so great an attraction for the lover of nature, that the most beautiful landscape seems scarcely complete without it. There are no effects so fascinating as those produced by the reflexions in nature's living mirror, with their delicacy of form, ever fleeting and changing, and their subtle combinations of colour. — William Montagu-Pollock

A woman, till five-and-thirty, is only looked upon as a raw girl, and can possibly make no noise in the world till about forty. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others' retiring. — Mary Wortley Montagu

People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Hell has been described as a pocket edition of Chicago. — Ashley Montagu

Prudent people are very happy; 'tis an exceeding fine thing, that's certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think. — Mary Wortley Montagu

We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts. — Mary Wortley Montagu