“There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.”

— Alan Ayckbourn

Newsweek, March 25, 1979.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Alan Ayckbourn 6

English playwright 1939

Donna VanLiere (1966) American writer

Source: The Christmas Note

“There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.”

Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996) First President of Nigeria

My Odyssey (1971), No. 5

“People don't very much like things that are beautiful — they are so far from their nasty little minds.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Debussy : Musician of France (1957) by Victor Illyitch Seroff, p. 172

“You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world.”

Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) American writer, politician, ambassador, journalist and anti-Communist activist

Europe in the Spring, ch. 12 (1940)

“There is for a man two things in life that are very important, head and shoulders above everything else. Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

“The Gita tells us that there are four kinds of people who take to God-life. Of them ,the afflicted (arta) are the very first ones. The rest in their order are the seekers of knowledge, the seekerse of truth as it is, and the seekers of wisdom.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Source: Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000), p.180

“People don't change or improve much, but they do evolve. It is very slow.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)
Context: Feminists have often claimed a moral equivalence for sexual and racial prejudice. There are certain affinities and one or two of these affinities are mildly and paradoxically encouraging. Sexism is like racism: we all feel such impulses. Our parents feel them more strongly than we feel them; our children, we trust, will feel them less strongly than we feel them. People don't change or improve much, but they do evolve. It is very slow.

“There's not much you need to know about the world. Except how to use a sword and trust very few.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

“I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

“There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to V.A. Posse (February 15, 1900)
Letters

“There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.”

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Alan Ayckbourn 6

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