Quotes about people
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“We are not the person other people wish we were. We are who we decide to be.”

Source: Aleph (2011)

“It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Death, Age, Disease, Way

“The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.”

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

Conversation with private secretary John Hay (23 December 1863), describing a dream Lincoln had that evening, in Abraham Lincoln : A History (1890) by John Hay
Posthumous attributions

“If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Way, Feeling

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

World, Hope, Positive

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Pain, Soul, Imagination, Light

“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love

“Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

Happiness, World, Night

“Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.'

Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein:

COMING. TORSTEIN.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

Support, Sea

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker

Way, Feeling, Reading

“As you go through life's rich tapestry, you realize that most people you meet aren't fit to shine your shoes. It's a sad fact, but it's true. A good friend is someone who'd hide you if you were on the run for murder. How many of them do you know?”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Life, Sadness, Shoe

“But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Personality

“Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Life, Books, Thinking, Sense

“Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

“Strange, he thought, how seldom people tend to look up”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

“If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Leadership

“Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Evil

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

World, Hope, Hope

“Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

World, Parent, For Parents

“Jesus paid for salvation for every man, woman, boy, and girl who would ever live on this earth. But people must believe on Jesus and receive Him as their own Savior before salvation can benefit them.”

Kenneth E. Hagin (1917–2003) American theologian

Source: Biblical Ways To Receive Healing

Girl, Boy

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave… you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, Thinking, Time

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

As quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23

Problem

“People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Country

“Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Love

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Beauty

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Music, Business, Thinking

“I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Hate, Goodbye

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Music

“Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Love

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, World, Peace

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

Iris Murdoch book A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.

Flowers, Thinking, Time, Joy

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Death, Fools

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Fear, Suffering, Time, Moving On

“I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some people wake up drowsy. Some people wake up energized. I wake up dead.”

John Marsden book Tomorrow, When the War Began

Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began

Dead

“Death is a problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.”

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) German sociologist

Death, Problem, Dead

“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

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

Decision

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

Feeling, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“But when two people feel something, they ought to respect that enough to figure it out”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Witness

Feeling

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Color

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Dreams, Birthday, Graduation

“I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

Understanding

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Leadership

“He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Hurt

“People only disappear when they have somewhere to go”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Truth

“I like today and perhaps a little future still, but the past is really something I'm not interested in. So, as far as I'm concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don't know. When I know, I don't care because I knew how it was.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Past, Future

“If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

Time

“Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.”

Martina Navrátilová (1956) American-Czech tennis player

Source: Queer Notions, A Fabulous Collection of Gay and Lesbian Wit and Wisdom, 1996, p. 18.

Clothes

“And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.”

Denis Johnson

Jesus' Son

Help

“And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we're us.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

World, Parent

“Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

God

“People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Healing
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: Awareness: A de Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words

Pain, Change

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Context: The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
Context: But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

Way

“You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. Besides you don't build a better world by choppin' heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad (1991)

World, Girl

“The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Source: All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day

Love

“Love people, not things; use things, not people.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Love, Inspirational

“I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I'm trying to give a little of it back to others. It's one of the greatest pleasures I know.”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

Pleasure, Thinking, Reading

“Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

Silence

“A sense of humor is the best indicator that you will recover; it is often the best indicator that people will love you. Sustain that and you have hope.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Love, Hope, Sense, Depressing

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Friendship, Marriage

“And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

Forgiveness, Hurt

“Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Books, Study, Learning

“Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

World

“When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget… So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Help, Cry, Forgetting

“When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act."”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

And they do calm down.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Suicide, Time

“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”

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

Peace, Justice

“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

“People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Thinking

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, 29 Sep 2002. <br class="br">Speeches <br class="br">Source: War Talk

Color, Clothes, Dead

“If you want God to bless you and use you greatly, you must be willing to walk with a limp the rest of your life, because God uses weak people.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Past

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Truth, Way

“You can say anything if enough people will listen.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Education, Music, Way

“Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

Universe, Past, Future

“Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Soul

“It is no use trying to sum people up.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

“One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Original: (de) Wer sich aber zum Wurm macht, kann nachher nicht klagen, dass er mit Füßen getreten wird.
Source: Part two: Metaphysical Principles of Virtue page 98. note: Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

“Every time you come in yelling that God damn "Rise and Shine!" "Rise and Shine!" I say to myself, "How lucky dead people are!"”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, Scene Three
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

God, Time, Dead

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Thinking, Heart