Evan Esar Quotes

All men are created equal in one respect, at least, and that is their desire to be unequal.

All men are born equal, but some of them outgrow it.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

We can’t all be better than everyone else.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

I believe in individuality, that everybody is special, and it's up to them to find that quality and let it live.

I have an idea of who I want to be, I have a vision of my own success.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

I'm not exactly ambitious as much as I have a very good realization of what I am and what I am capable of.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

I just want to be the best Carly Rae I can be.