Quotes about people
page 2

“I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Thinking

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

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

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Truth, Help

“It’s sad, y’know, what money does to people.”

Ozzy Osbourne book I Am Ozzy

Source: I Am Ozzy

Money, Sadness

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Books

“Two things cause people to be destroyed: fear of poverty and seeking superiority through pride.”

Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol. 72, p. 39

Fear

“But I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence. Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can. Your mother can't reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn't show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man. When I was young I was quiet, withdrawn. I read a lot, wrote poetry, kept a diary. I watched TV all day. I stayed in front of the television. It was when I was in front of the TV by myself, being alone in the house by myself, having to cook dinner by myself, eat by myself. Just being by myself and looking at TV, at families and all these people out there in this pretend world. I knew I could be part of it if I pretended too, So early on I just watched and emulated … and I just thirsted for that. I thought if I could be and act like those characters, act like those people, I could have some of their joy. If I could act like I had a big family I wouldn't feel as lonely.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

World, Family, Way, Feeling

“There is no need to carry me to another prison. My life is already ebbing away. I suggest that you nail me to a cross and burn me alive. My flaming body will be a torch to light my people on their path to freedom.”

Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918) Bosnian assassin

Said to the prison warden on being moved to another prison; as quoted by Borivoje Jevtic (1914) http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand

Life, Freedom, Light

“Youths of the Pellaians and of the Macedonians and of the Hellenic Amphictiony and of the Lakedaimonians and of the Corinthians… and of all the Hellenic peoples, join your fellow-soldiers and entrust yourselves to me, so that we can move against the barbarians and liberate ourselves from the Persian bondage, for as Greeks we should not be slaves to barbarians.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.15.1-4

Youth

“Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

World, Way, Understanding, Fight

“Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)

School, Girl, Question, Thinking

“Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.”

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

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

Love, Death, Pain, World

“I was trying to figure out what I’m doing, and that was the first time I was constantly being kicked down for doing that. When I didn’t know, I just wanted to say, ‘This is what I want, this is where I am in my professional life, things changed in my personal life, things changed in my heart — everything.’ And people just thought, ‘Alright, this is what we think.’ And yeah, I made some decisions that weren’t great as well, and so did he and that’s why we went through all that to only make us better. And he has heard [the song] and he has seen the video, and it’s something that I feel like girls need hear, and it’s something I’m willing to share with people.”

Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress

Life, Feeling, Girl, Thinking

“Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in other country to make the rich richer. Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.”

Michael Prysner (1983) American anti-war political activist

"Our Real Enemies"

War, Country

“Some of them are funny. Some of them are ridiculous. Some of them are annoying. I don't want to be one of those people that complains about the rumours. I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, "This isn't true!"”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

It is what it is, I tend not to do that. Interview with British GQ (September 2013) http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/one-direction-gq-covers-interview

“Make sure that you are next year's big success story. Don't fall into the pit of people who have given up on making something of themselves, and make sure you make everything out of yourself. I'm getting too old for this. And when I retire someday, I'm going to want to sit down at a computer and play your games, read your stories, and watch your videos. Don't fall in with the people who have already given up on themselves. You are tomorrow's next big thing.”

Scott Cawthon (1971) American independent video game designer

Game, Reading, Success

“Truly free people do not need to be told they are free.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

“Education is perceived as a crucial instrument for increasing productivity and income, skills, competency of human resources, and sustainable growth. In the end, education helps reduce social problems, and improves quality of life so that people can live equally with others in society.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education helps reduce social problems and improves quality of life

Life, Education, Problem, Help

“I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don't. If you have that inside of you and can't get it out, what do you do?”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

“There are only two types of people in this world: those who die for freedom and those who died for their religions. Both are considered martyrs.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

World, Religion, Freedom

“Notice who beams at your happiness and sits with you in your sadness.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Happiness, Sadness

“If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins: Misattributed Context: People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Motivation, Selfishness, Happy

“People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for some underdog anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Dogs, Fight

“It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Variant: It is sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

Sadness, Sad, Heartbreaking, Depressing

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth

“I don’t care about losing people who don’t wanna be in my life anymore. I’ve lost people who meant the world to me and I’m still doing just fine.”

Karl May (1842–1912) German writer

Life, World

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Life, God, History, Future

“Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Heart

“France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing, though, is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

History

“But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind.”

Bodhidharma (483–540) Chinese philosopher and Buddhist Monk

Source: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

Understanding

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free… so other people would be also free.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Personality

“The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

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

Quote in Vincent's letter, from Arles, Tuesday, 18 September 1888; as cited in Van Gogh : The Self-portraits (1969) by Fritz Erpel, p. 17
Variant translations: The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
As quoted in Mary Engelbreit's Words To Live By (1999) by Mary Engelbreit
I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
1880s, 1888
Variant: There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Love, Feeling, Thinking

“The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1978), "Thinking".

Truth, Sadness, Evil

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Learning, Change

“All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.”

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

Source: Devil at My Heels

Life, Learning

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.”

Stephen King book The Body

Different Seasons (1982), The Body

Love, Lie, Secret, Way

“How could Reagan live in a White
House, which has a lot of rooms, and there be homelessness? And he's talking about helping. I don't believe that there is anyone that is going hungry in America simply by reason of denial or lack of ability to feed them. It is by people not knowing where or how to get this help. Why can't he take people off the street and put them in his White House? Then he'll have people from the streets to help him with his ideas. Not helpless! Homeless! Not helpless They haven't been homeless forever. They've done things in society. The White House would be tainted because he doesn't want to get dirty.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

Idea, Help, Housing

“If people hate you, then you're probably doing something right”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Hate

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Life, Hate, Friendship

“Some people like to read their bibles in the Hebrew; some like to read it in the Greek; I like to read it in the Holy Spirit”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Page 79 The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:

Reading

“Life is suffering, and suffering can make you resentful, murderous, and then genocidal, if you take it far enough. So you need an antidote to suffering. And maybe you think that you can build walls of luxury around yourself, and that that will protect you from the suffering. Good luck with that. That isn't going to work. Maybe you think that you could build a delusion and live inside that. Well, that's going to fall apart. What is there, then, that's going to help you fight against suffering? That's easy: It's the Truth. The Truth is the antidote to suffering. The reason for that is because the Truth puts reality behind you, so that you can face the reality that's coming straight at you without becoming weak and degenerating and becoming resentful and wishing for the destruction of Being, because that's the final Hell. The final Hell is your soul wishing for the destruction of everything, because it's too painful, and you're too bitter. And that happens to people all the time.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Life, Pain, Truth, Soul

“The first fruit of forbearance is that people will sympathize with you and they will go against the man who offended you arrogantly.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

“Everywhere I go, somebody is staring at me. I don`t know if people are staring because they recognize me or because they think I`m a weirdo.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

Thinking

“To the question what wine he found pleasant to drink, he replied, "That for which other people pay."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 54
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Drink, Question, Wine

“When seeing today the defendants on the dock, don’t believe them to be the old Combat Group Peiper. All my old friends and comrades have gone before! These people who plead for mitigating circumstances are only the negative selection! The real outfit is waiting for me in Valhalla!”

Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer

Letter to Willis Everett, July 14, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 32.

Waiting

“OK, number one. There, as I know of, there is no such thing as skin bleaching… I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin, it's something that I cannot help, OK? But, when people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am, it hurts me. It's a problem for me, I can't control it.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On the lightening of his skin.
Televised Interview with Oprah Winfrey (1993)

Problem, Help, Hurt

“There are only three options in dealing with people: it will either be slavery, tyranny, or negotiation.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“If I win - I win for all our people, if I lose - I lose only myself.”

Vasil Levski (1837–1873) Bulgarian revolutionary

A letter to Panayot Hitov, written in March/April 1868.
Original: (bg) Ако спечеля, печеля за цял народ – ако загубя, губя само мене си.

“The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?”

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher (1932). “Those Damned Nazis,” (Nazi propaganda pamphlet).
1930s

Life, War, Communication, Freedom

“People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.”

David Lane (white nationalist) book 88 Precepts

page ?
88 Precepts

World

“I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in Christian Jazz Artists Newsletter (February/March 2005) http://www.songsofdavid.com/CJAFebMarch2005.htm; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. Disputed

Life, Laughter, Joy

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

Funny

“It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in The White Rose (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Life

“I can't relate to lazy people. We don't speak the same language. I don't understand you. I don't want to understand you.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

Understanding, Relation ships

“All the holy scriptures are useless without people having faith into their hearts.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Faith, Heart

“Everything was already predestined by God, that is why Jesus saw the people’s ignorance.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Source: Franny and Zooey

God

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Love, Hate

“The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

Understanding, Thinking

“The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

“People who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Variant: Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Variant Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.
In the sermon titled "The Use of Money" Wesley said, "Employ whatever God has entrusted you with in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree . . . to all men." This sermon is in the collection titled "Wesley's Standard Sermons." They are called "standard" because all Methodist preachers were instructed to read them and use them in interpreting the Christian faith.
Disputed
Variant: Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.
Source: According to Richard Heitzenrater, Professor of Church History and Wesleyan Studies at Duke Divinity School, there is no evidence that John Wesley ever wrote the rule that is attributed to him.

Way, Time

“When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Soul, Cry

“And silver, though few people knew it, was a rarer metal than gold.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Course of True Love [and First Dates]

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Love, Fate, Heart

“There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were”

Nina Simone (1933–2003) American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist

“Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted.”

David Steindl-Rast (1926) American theologian

Source: Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day

Happiness

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Stupidity

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Variant: Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.
Source: Love and Living

Love, Life, Heart Touching, Valentine's Day

“People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

“Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”

Annie Ernaux (1940) French writer

Source: Quoted in Melodrama after the tears, ed. Jörg Metelmann and Scott Loren (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 178

Life, Intelligence, Universe

“What I like doing best is Nothing."

"How do you do Nothing," asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.

"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, 'What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say, 'Oh, Nothing,' and then you go and do it.

It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

"Oh!" said Pooh.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Time

“The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Education, Way, Victory

“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.

World, Way

“A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world, because that's where people are shown what they could be if they wanted, and what they'd like to be if they dared to and what they really are”

Tove Jansson book Moominsummer Madness

Source: Moominsummer Madness

World, Housing

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Fear, Dreams, Sleep

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Variant: You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 52 (in 1998 edition)

Deep, Success, Friendship, Relationship

“People say I make strange choices, but they’re not strange for me. My sickness is that I’m fascinated by human behavior, by what’s underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

World, Behavior

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Thinking, Time

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

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

Lie, Wealth

“A lot of people don't want to make their own decisions. They're too scared. It's much easier to be told what to do.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Decision

“two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Sleep

“This is Annabeth,” Jason said. “Uh, normally she doesn't judo-flip people.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“Boy Scout is not merely to give you fun and adventure but that, like the backwoodsmen, explorers, and frontiersmen whom you are following, you will be fitting yourself to help your country and to be of service to other people who may be in need of help. That is what the best men are out to do.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

Source: Robert Baden-Powell: Scouting for Boys, The Original

Men, Boy, Help, Country

“I'm suspicious of people who don't like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn't like a person.”

Bill Murray (1950) American actor and comedian

Dogs, Personality

“Here people was once used to be honourable: now they are all bad; they have kept one goodness: that they are greatest boozers.”

Marco Polo (1254–1324) Venetian explorer and merchant noted for travel to central and eastern Asia

“There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

Source: Why Revival Tarries

God, Thinking, Personality

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.”

Frank Zappa book The Real Frank Zappa Book

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)
Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book

Problem

“People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Love, Painting

“People tend to take pride in who they are. And that's a bad idea, because that stops you from becoming who you could be. Because, if you're proud of who you are, you won't let that go when it's necessary; you won't step away from it.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

ibid
Other

Idea

“How many people you know who can name every serial killer who ever existed in a row?”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

2000s, Relapse (2009)

“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

World, Feeling

“It's simply our duty to save these people, and we still have time to remove them! But it's useless to sacrifice men in this senseless way. It's high time! We must evacuate those soldiers at once!”

Heinz Guderian (1888–1954) German general

Arguing with Adolf Hitler about the German army being cut off in the Courland Pocket; as quoted in Inside the Third Reich : Memoirs (1971) by Albert Speer, p. 534

Men, Way, Time

“Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people
And you're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions
If we can speak honestly.What do you feel when you see
All the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night
Before you go to sleep?
What do you feel
When you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Dear Mr. President, featuring the Indigo Girls, written by Pink and Billy Mann
Song lyrics, I'm Not Dead (2006)

Feeling, Question, Sleep, Night

“The Jewish people, no matter where they are, they become the best in the world.”

Josef Mengele (1911–1979) Nazi officer and physician

As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192

World

“There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exciting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Address at the Belgrade train station (1 June 1892)

Hope

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, World

“If I'm president, I'll leave UN. That institution is of no use. It's an organization of communists, of people that don't have any commitment at least to South America.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Bolsonaro diz que vai tirar Brasil da ONU se for eleito presidente https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2018/noticia/2018/08/18/bolsonaro-diz-que-vai-tirar-brasil-da-onu-se-for-eleito-presidente.ghtml. G1 (18 August 2018).

“I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

Daily Mail (25 January 2012)

Love, Life, Hope, Personality

“The people think of wealth and power as the greatest fate,
But in this world a spell of health is the best state.
What men call sovereignty is a worldly strife and constant war;
Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest of all estates.”

Suleiman (1494–1566) Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

Mansel, Philip, Constantinople: city of the world's desire 1453-1924 (1995), p. 84
Poetry

Men, God, Fate, War

Quotes about people page 2

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Quotes about people
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