Celia Green: Quotes about people

“People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it.”

“It is inconceivable that anything should be existing. It is not inconceivable that a lot of people should also be existing who are not interested in the fact that they exist. But it is certainly very odd.”

“It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them equally clever, so teaching methods are adopted which make it practically impossible for anyone to learn anything.”

“When people talk about 'the sanctity of the individual' they mean 'the sanctity of the statistical norm.”

“It is superfluous to be humble on one's own behalf; so many people are willing to do it for one.”

“What is scandalous is not that stupid people should sometimes inherit private incomes; but that clever people should sometimes not.”

“In an unenlightened society some people are forced to play degrading social roles; in an enlightened society, everyone is.”

“When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share.”

“In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.”

“People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get.”

“People having religions is an insult to the universe.”

“Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learned to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one another's expense. This is why they talk so much about the value of human understanding and sympathy - it has a certain rarity value in their world.”

“It is actually a principle of modern paternalism that if you want something you should be stopped from having it[…] Most foods are harmful to some people if taken in excess, and I expect the only reason that carrots are still available without a prescription is that no one has got very excited about them, or claimed that they might cure cancer.”