Quotes about people
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“Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable.
Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Choice

Cats, Forgetting

“Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Way

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

Anthony Bourdain book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Medium Raw (2010)
Source: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Travel, Sleep, Learning, Cooking

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Birth, Thinking

“She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Life, Children, World, Light

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean (Ch. VII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Sadness, Sad

“There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don't
see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Friendship, Happiness

“It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?”

Sarah Waters The Night Watch

Source: The Night Watch

Love

“I prefer the people who eat off the bare earth the delirium from which they were born.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything - that is how, it is between people who are each other's first memories”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Memory

“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Soul, Indifference

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Some people work an entire lifetime and wonder if they ever made a difference to the world. But the Marines don't have that problem.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Letter to Lance Cpl. Joe Hickey http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,88163,00.html (23 September 1983), R.W. "Dick" Gaines http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/marinesquote.html refers in detail <br class="br">1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

World, Problem

“Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

“Ach, people are always telling us not to do things" said Rob Anybody, "that's how we ken the most interesting things to do.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

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

God, Thinking

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Music, Time

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Critic as Artist

“The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

Women, Men, Stupidity

“My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Cecil Graham, Act II
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“Sometimes the people closest to you betray you, and your home isn’t a place you can be happy anymore. It’s hard, but it’s true.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Happiness, Home

“people who have failed in their lives, they are suffering their failure. People who have succeeded in their life, they are suffering their success.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Inner Management: In the Presence of the Master

Life, Failure, Suffering, Success

“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Thinking, Tree

“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Life

“A man's dignity isn't measured by the people he has around him when he's at the peak of his success, but by his ability not to forget those who helped him when his need was greatest.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Success, Help, Forgetting

“You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

World

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Way, Thinking

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

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

Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed

Truth, Beer, Dependency

“Most people are boring and stupid.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Stupidity

“A person can be lonely even if he is loved by many people, because he is still not the "One and Only" to anyone.”

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

29 December 1943
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Variant: You can be lonely even when you're loved by many people, since you're still not anybody's "one and only".
Source: Cliffs Notes on Frank's The Diary of Anne Frank

Love, Personality

“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night (1960)
Context: "Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve."
I exploded:
"What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?"
His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily:
"I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."

Faith

“The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

Idea, Christmas

“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

Justice, Law

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

World, Understanding

“When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don't notice when they drop out of your world.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

World

“There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

Death, Daughters, Forgetting

“When people cared about each other, they always found a way to make it work.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Way

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Effort, Time, Hurt

“You know, some people think Shadowhunters are just myths. Like mummies and genies." Kyle grinned at Jace. "Can you grant wishes?"

"That depends," he said. "Do you wish to be punched in the face?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking, Dependency

“Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Way, Leadership

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624

“If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Support, Past, Future

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”

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

Happiness, Effort, Personality

“Don’t worry that you aren’t giving people what they want. Give them who you are, and let that be enough.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Mistborn Trilogy

“most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means 'private law.' Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Law, Way

“There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Thinking

“Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164
Context: Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

Way

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

De l'Art de persuader ["On the Art of Persuasion"], written 1658; published posthumously.
Source: De l'art de persuader

“Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Secret, Appearance

“Like many isolated people, they were wrapped up in themselves and not too interested in the world outside.”

V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River

Source: A Bend in the River

World

“People destroy what they love.”

Paulo Coelho book The Valkyries

Source: The Valkyries

Love

“People can so easily be tempted by slackness… and by money.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Money

“Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Marriage

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, Parting

“When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass.”

Steven Kotler (1967) American journalist

Source: A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life

Animals

“Stanley:
Delicate piece she is.
Stella:
She is. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Girl, Change

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Truth

“Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Thinking

“That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people would lead better lives."

IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN'T LIVE AT ALL.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Thinking

“Sweetheart, never listen to what my enemies say. They're very confused people. I know they are because I've spent years making them that way.”

Tamora Pierce book Mastiff

Source: Mastiff

Way

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Man and the Gospel (1865) by Thomas Guthrie "and you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it."
“We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to.” -- Alexander Pope (1727).
Misattributed
Variant: If you want to know what the Lord God thinks of money, just look at those to whom he gives it.

Money, God, Thinking

“But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Parting

“When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

Truth

“With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Understanding

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Second Sin (1973), p. 49.

Personality

“When faced with a decision, many people say they are waiting for God. But I understand, in most cases, God is waiting for me.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

God, Understanding, Decision, Waiting

“Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

Imagination

“It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Feeling, Home, Understanding, Sense

“All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Life, Death, Children, Dance

“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

Fools

“We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee.”

C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Dreams, Lying

“There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will—we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. “We can't win,” we moan. “They won't let us win.”However, if we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we're already on the way to success.”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 232

Way, Problem, Thinking, Success

“But people love a hypocrite, you know——they recognize one of their own, and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn't you.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

Love, Feeling

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

“The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”

Joe Navarro (1953) Author, professional speaker, ex-FBI agent and supervisor

Source: What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

Problem

“Then the world will be for the common people, and the sounds of happiness will reach the deepest springs. Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto

Happiness, World, Spring

“My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Cecil Graham, Act III
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Death, Business

“Doors are for people with no imagination.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

Imagination

“The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

World, Way, Freedom

“Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Music

“Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last long as the bad. Not even close.”

Andre Agassi book Open. An Autobiography

Source: Open

Feeling, Loss

“No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want, need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It (1986), Ch. 16 : Eddie's Bad Break, §8
Context: Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

Heart, Housing