“There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don’t mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that’s the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.”

— John Steinbeck

Pt. 3
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

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John Steinbeck 366

American writer 1902–1968

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

“Some people dye their hair yellow or put rings in their noses”

Bertie Ahern (1951) Irish politician, 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

Explaining to the Mahon Tribunal on 20 December 2007 why he did not have a bank account in 1993. Planning Tribunal Transcript http://www.planningtribunal.ie/images/SITECONTENT_784.pdf planningtribunal.ie. 2007-12-20.

“MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

“I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself — and if other people like it, that’s great.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, III

“Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

"Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage" (1796)
Variant translation:
Never allow yourselves to forget that it is for their own sakes and not for yours that all those wise lawgivers have forced you into your present unnatural and rigid molds. And as evidence of this, I need only produce all our political, civil, and religious institutions. Examine them thoroughly, and either I am very much mistaken or you will find that mankind has been forced to bow, century after century, beneath a mere handful of scoundrels has conspired, in ever age, to impose upon it. Beware of the man who wants to set things in order. Setting things in order always involves acquiring mastery over others — by tying them hand and foot.
As translated by Derek Coleman, in Diderot's Selected Writings (1966)
Context: As for our celebrated lawgivers, who have cast us in our present awkward mold, you may be sure that they have acted to serve their interests and not ours. Witness all our political, civil, and religious institutions — examine them thoroughly: unless I am very much mistaken, you will see how, through the ages, the human race has been broken to the halter that a handful of rascals were itching to impose. Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

“We are not a small people, we are maybe something of a great people.”

René Lévesque (1922–1987) Quebec politician

On n'est pas un petit peuple, on est peut-être quelque chose comme un grand peuple.
Victory speech, 1976 Quebec election. http://archives.radio-canada.ca/politique/partis_chefs_politiques/clips/6151/