Quotes about people
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“Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

“Yeah, all right, but everyone knows they torture people," mumbled Sam.
"Do they?" said Vimes. "Then why doesn't anyone do anything about it?"
"'cos they torture people.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

“Granny Weatherwax was not a good loser. From her point of view, losing was something that happened to other people.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Wealth

“It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Universe

“I'm always on the lookout for something good about people. Often months go by.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

“Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”

Tove Jansson book Moominland Midwinter

Source: Moominland Midwinter

“We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

“I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Hate, Beauty, Flowers, Nature

“Most of the people are homesick anyway, and a little lonely, and they hide themselves in their hair and are turned into flowers.”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Source: Sculptor's Daughter

Flowers

“People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.”

Haruki Murakami book Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

Dreams, Soul

“The people on the edge of Hell were most afraid of the devil; for those already in hell the devil was only another and no one in particular.”

Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Hell

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011), p.397

Justice

“I don't want to put the world to rights… I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.”

Lee Child book 61 Hours

Source: 61 Hours

World

“There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

Sadness, History

“The great commandment is that we preach the gospel to every creature, but neither God nor the Bible says anything about forcing it down people's throats.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

God

“The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Happiness, Dependency

“Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

History, Evil

“Yes, very sensible… People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, Sense, Time

“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

According to The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by F. B. Carpenter, Lincoln quoted this as having been said to him by a fellow-passenger in a stagecoach. See also "Washington during the War", Macmillan's Magazine 6:24 http://books.google.com/books?id=rB4AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=folks (May 1862) Posthumous attributions Variant: It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.

“… All the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"

"Yeah," said Rincewind. "… Luters, I expect.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Music, Help

“We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Subject: Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist http://www.dailysummit.net/says/interview260802.htm, interviewed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002)

World, Nature

“People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“you can’t fool all the people all the time,” but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: The Lessons of History

Fools, Time, Country

“I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

Animals, Cheating

“Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Literature

“Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.”

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947–2019) Tibetan Dzogchen lama of the Nyingma tradition

Life, Wisdom

“Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Peace, Feeling, Tree

“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaid. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

Marriage, Hope, Future

“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Art

“You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Noam Chomsky in interview by John Pilger on BBC's The Late Show, November 25, 1992 http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/14177.htm. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

“It’s strange,” Moominmamma thought. “Strange that people can be sad, and even angry because life is too easy. But that’s the way it is, I suppose. The only thing to do is to start life afresh.”

Tove Jansson book Moominpappa at Sea

Source: Moominpappa at Sea

Life, Sadness, Way

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life, Secret, World, Perfection

“Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.”

Terry Pratchett book Dodger

Source: Dodger

Money, Thinking

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Fear, Hope

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“I believe in God but people are liars. It's those people who say they are appointed by God who I don't believe in.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

God

“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action in mind.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert", in Mother Earth News No. 69 (May/June 1981)
General sources

“If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Love

“I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if…. if only there were no other people in the world.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

World, Sadness, Way, Heart

“I believe in using words, not fists… I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon.[citation needed]
Disputed

Food, Sex, Time, Box

“[I]t is something that comes up as a struggle in me. It especially came up when I was about 16 or 17. In high school people think you have to be so macho. People get attacked just because someone insinuates something about their sexuality. I think that’s gruesome.”

Green Day

School, Thinking

“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Love, Life, Home, Housing

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

#124
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Source: Man and Superman

World, Dependency

“There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Help

“I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Life, Happiness, Thinking

“Most truth's are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Truth, Feeling

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

As quoted in Think, Vol. 27 (1961), p. 32
Disputed

Happiness, World, Happy

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”

Irving Stone (1903–1989) American writer

Source: Clarence Darrow for the Defense

Love, Friendship, Books

“People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

Change

“It is a lie that people who love each other must know everything about each other. Love must occasionally allow for a gap.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: Margarettown

Love, Lie

“You young people never say anything. And us old folks don't know how to stop talking.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“When people are happy they have a reserve upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Happiness, Drawing

“It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Thinking

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Evil

“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Hell

“The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

“if to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The rest is in the hands of God.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Attributions in an "Oration upon the Death of General Washington, Delivered at the Request of the Corporation of the City of New York On the 31st of December, 1799", by Gouverneur Morris. Though these words, supposedly given at the opening of the Constitutional Convention, were not recorded in James Madison's summary of the events of 25 May 1787, George Bancroft accepted them as genuine (History of the United States of America, volume VI, Book III, Chapter I). Henry Cabot Lodge however gave cogent reasons for rejecting them (George Washington, Volume II, Chapter I). The attribution to Washington was so widely accepted that it was engraved above the Fifteenth Street entrance to the Department of Commerce Bldg. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015060022434;view=1up;seq=48 in Washington, D.C., on the arch in Washington Square Park in New York City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Square_Arch and on a bronze plaque above the Eighteenth Street doorway to Constitution Hall http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015060022434;view=1up;seq=50. Disputed Context: Americans! let the opinion then delivered by the greatest and best of men, be ever present to your remembrance. He was collected within himself. His countenance had more than usual solemnity; his, eye was fixed, and seemed to look into futurity. "It is (said he) too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." This was the patriot voice of Washington; and this the constant tenor of his conduct. With this deep sense of duty, he gave to our Constitution his cordial assent; and has added the fame of a legislator to that of a hero.

God