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 The 25 Most Helpful Things Ever Said
About Men, Masculinity, and Marriage

By Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com Web: www.MenAlive.com

My father tried to commit suicide when I was five years old. He

recovered, but my life was never the same. I went to medical school,
then graduate school. For the last 44 years I have specialized in
helping men and the women who love them. I think I’ve been trying,
on some level, to understand what happened to my father so that I
can be a better father to my sons and daughter, a better husband to
my wife, and a better friend to myself.

My first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man, was published

in 1983. In the introduction I wrote, “The Women’s Movement first
helped me question the roles we had all built our lives upon. It
stimulated a desire to have the support of men who were going
through similar changes. I joined a men’s group and received
tremendous help and insight.”

Inside Out was a very personal book and most publishers refused
to take it on. One editor confided in me that “it was just too raw. It
cut too close to home.” I didn’t pull any punches. In the first chapter I
listed the Fears That Drive Me including:

1. My feelings will destroy me if I let them.

2. I’ll go crazy like my father.
3. I’ll be a failure at work and lose my family’s respect.
4. There’s something dangerous and violent in me waiting to
destroy the people I love the most.
5. Women will “love me, but underneath the surface, they’ll feel
pity and contempt (like my mother felt for my father).
 I continued with a list of the 10 Commandments That Move Me.

1. Thou shalt not be weak, nor have weak gods before thee.
2. Thou shalt not fail thyself, nor fail as thy father before thee.
3. Thou shalt not keep holy any day that denies thy work.
4. Thou shalt not express strong emotions, neither high nor low.
5. Thou shalt not cry, complain, or ask for help.
6. Thou shalt not be hostile or angry, especially towards women.
7. Thou sahlt not be uncertain or ambivalent.
8. Thou shalt not be dependent on anyone, but must always be
strong.
9. Thou shalt not acknowledge they death or thy limitations.
10. Thou shalt do unto other men before they do unto you.

Over the last 44 years, I have accumulated hundreds of quotes

and bits of information about men that I have found helpful. I offer the
following 25 for your consideration. Let me know what you think.

25. “When a woman calls, you must go.” --Zorba the Greek.

24. “My own preference, if I had the good fortune to have another
son, would be to avoid circumcision, and leave his little penis
alone.” --Benjamin Spock.

23. “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives—
the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response,
the death of awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain
or glory of other men in oneself.” --Norman Cousins

22. “Wake up. Men have traditionally been the guardians of the
earth. We need a new kind of warrior. Men are now called on
to be warriors for the earth.” --John Stokes.

21. “The man who has the soul of the wolf knows the self-restraint
of the wolf. Aimless executions and slaughterings are not the
work of wolves and eagles but the work of hysterical sheep.”
--Gary Snyder.
20. “Masculinity is not something given to you, something you’re
born with, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning
small battles with honor.” --Normal Mailer

19. “She called to me from across her beauty. It stretched

between us like a maze. I disappeared inside it, never to be
seen again.” --Sy Safransky

18. “If a person continues to see only giants, it means he is still

seeing the world through the eyes of a child. I have a feeling
that man’s fear of woman comes from having first seen her as
the mother, creator of men.” --Anais Nin.

17. “It was slow in dawning on me that WOMAN had an

overwhelming influence on my life and on the lives of all the
men I knew. If the text of my life was ‘successful independent
man,’ the subtext was ‘engulfed by WOMAN.’” --Sam Keen

16. “There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is
‘Where am I going?’ and the second is ‘Who will go with me?’
If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in
trouble.” --Howard Thurman

15. “The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine ‘privilege’
and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body.
He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with
lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself—emotionally,
psychologically and physically.” --Herb Goldberg

14. “It was a great mistake, my being born a man. I would have
Been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I
Will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does
not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong,
and who must always be a little in love with death!”
--Eugene O’Neill

13. “A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let

alone.” --Henry David Thoreau
12. “Men do not face enemy machine guns because they have
been treated with kindness. They face them because they
have a bayonet up their ass.” Neil Simon

11. “I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not
provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated,
disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the
attempt to prevent or undo this ‘loss of face’—no matter how
severe the punishment, even if it includes death.”
--James Gilligan

10. “If menopause is the silent passage, ‘male menopause’ is the

unspeakable passage. It is fraught with secrecy, shame, and
denial. It is much more fundamental than the ending of the
fertile period of a woman’s life, because it strikes at the core of
what it is to be a man.” --Gail Sheehy

9. “One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system
in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through
the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap
music.” --Robert Bly

8. “When a man does not live with his children and does not get
along with the mother of his children, his fatherhood becomes
essentially untenable, regardless of how he feels, how hard he
tries, or whether he is a good guy. Almost by definition, he has
become de-fathered.” --David Blankenhorn

7. “We can’t be comfortable in intimacy with women because we

have never been comfortable in being distant from them.”
--Sam Keen

6. “The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding

and building systems. The female brain is predominantly hard-
wired for empathy.” --Simon Baron-Cohen.

5. “There is a biological basis for the observation that ‘Men never

remember and women never forget. It plays out through our
hormones.” --Marianne J. Legato
 4. “Testosterone is a sex hormone, and I think it is the most
social of hormones. The major social effect of testosterone is
to orient us toward issues of sex and power. By the end of
puberty testosterone levels in males are 8 to 10 times higher
than in females, but decrease with age.” --James McBride

3. “Try not to become a man of success, rather become a man

of value.” –Albert Einstein.

2. “A Cree Indian legend says that when the Earth is sick and
the animals disappear, there will come a tribe of people from all
creeds, colors and cultures who believe in deeds, not words
and who will restore the Earth to its former beauty. This tribe
will be called The Warrior of the Rainbow.” --Twyla Dell

1. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of

creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
This is the judgment. Life’s most urgent question is, what are
you doing for others.” --Martin Luther King, Jr.

I hope you find these helpful whether you are male or female. Of
course I don’t really claim that these are the “most helpful things ever
said about men.” They are just the ones that resonate with me. I
look forward to hearing your own. Post here or you can write me
direct.

Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com Web: www.MenAlive.com