“If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.”

— Ralph Bunche

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Ralph Bunche 19

American diplomat 1904–1971

Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister

Whoops! It's Christmas (1959)
Context: The central core of truth is that Christmas turns everything upside down, the upside of heaven come down to earth. The Christmas story puts a new value on every man. He is not a thing to be used, not a chemical accident, not an educated ape. Every man is a V. I. P., because he has divine worth. That was revealed when "Love came down at Christmas." A scientist said, making a plea for exchange scholarships between nations, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a person.

“At very best, a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

A very similar statement has become attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but apparently only in recent decades: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle." This seems to have been first attributed to Franklin in The New Age Magazine Vol. 66 (1958), and the earliest appearance of it yet located is in Coronet magazine, Vol. 34 (1953), p. 27, where it was attributed to a Louise Stein.
On Being a Real Person (1943)