Quotes about people
page 47

Jason Statham photo
Bobby Sands photo

“They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we'll see the rising of the moon.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Diary entry, (17 March 1981), translated from the original Irish, in Skylark Sing your Lonely Song : An Anthology of the Writings of Bobby Sands (1991)
Other writings

Harold Pinter photo

“…And I was only concerned about the migrant worker, the people I had known best. I had been a migrant worker. So I began to see that my role—if I want to call it that—would be to document that period of time, but giving it some kind of spiritual strength or spiritual history.”

Tomás Rivera (1935–1984) American academic

On writing about migrant workers (as quoted in “CUANDO LLEGUEMOS/WHEN WE ARRIVE: THE PARADOX OF MIGRATION IN TOMAS RIVERA'S "... Y NO SE LO TRAGO LA TIERRA" https://www.jstor.org/stable/25745215?seq=1)

“When people asked what I wanted to be, I'd tell them a writer. They were surprised or indifferent. If people don't read, what is a writer?”

Tomás Rivera (1935–1984) American academic

On his wanting to become a writer at an early age in " From Poverty to Power: The Inspiring Story of Tomas Rivera http://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/778847/From-Poverty-to-Power-The-Inspiring-Story-of-Tomas-Rivera" (TeenInk)

Richard Wagner photo

“Although my mother gave me courage [and power], I do not thank her for yielding to your trickery; prematurely aged, colorless and pale, I hate happy people, and nothing gives me pleasure!”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Original: (de) Gab mir die Mutter Muth,
nicht mag ich ihr doch danken,
daß deiner List sie erlag:
frühalt, fahl und bleich,
hass' ich die Frohen,
freue mich nie!
Source: Quotes from his operas, Götterdämmerung, Hagen, Act 2, Scene 1

Simon Sinek photo

“Leadership is always about people.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Simon Sinek photo

“There are many ways to motivate people to do things, but loyalty comes from the ability to inspire people.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Salvador Allende photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Natalie Wynn photo

“The measure of fame that I have is kind of like micro fame, relative to a certain kind of community of people. It’s awful. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish fame on my worst enemy.”

Natalie Wynn (1988) YouTube personality

ContraPoints Talks Twitter, TERFs, and Tasting the 'Ideal Beer' https://oct.co/essays/natalie-wynn-contrapoints-interview, Interview for October, November 11, 2020
Interviews

Lila Downs photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo

“The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they are effective, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics of a people. Men are the producers of their conception, ideas, etc.”

real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846)

Austin Gallagher photo
João Goulart photo

“Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

Commonly attributed to Deloria on the internet, or sometimes to a few others, but without legitimate sourcing, the earliest variant of this yet located is a single quotation in Awakened India Vo. 99 (1994) p. 327, ascribed to Fr. Patrick Collins, University of Notre Dame, USA:
Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who know they have been there — perhaps through involvement with religion.
The next variant located is ascribed to an anonymous member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Illuminating the Heart: Steps Toward a More Spiritual Marriage (1996) by Barbara G. Markway, p. 28:
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
A variant also occurs in The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program: For Believers & Non-Believers (2001), by Glenn F. Chesnut, Ch. 1 : Discovering a Higher Power:
Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell; twelvestep spirituality is for those who've been there.
Misattributed

Aurelius Augustinus photo
Mashrafe Mortaza photo

“If I do not perform, then I have to move away. If you come to play for the country, then you have to be responsible when representing the flag of the country. 160 million people are watching, 160 million people have judgment. It must be paid.”

Mashrafe Mortaza (1983) Bangladeshi international cricketer and politician

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&u=https%3A%2F%2Fbani.com.bd%2F402%2F2090%2F

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow photo

“Radical Islam, by the grace of God, is not spreading across Russia. These and other radically-minded people pose a huge danger to Russia. This is why everything that happens in the Middle East, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, concerns us very closely.”

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (1946) primate of the Russian Orthodox Church

24 September 2015 http://www.pravmir.com/west-should-learn-from-russia-to-accept-muslim-refugees-patriarch-kirill/ at a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at his residence in Peredelkino, Moscow Region.

John Lennon photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity —in short: what mathematicians call "elegance"”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
1980s
Source: EWD648.

Elizabeth Martinez photo

“… I don't use "Hispanic" because it is Eurocentric and denies the fact that the people being labeled are not just of Spanish origin. Nor do they all speak Spanish. "Hispanic" denies our indigenous or Indian roots. It also denies our African roots, from the thousands of slaves that were brought to Latin America. "Hispanics" are a unique people made up of at least three different populations. For many of us the term "Latino/Latina" is better than "Hispanic."”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

It has a connection with Latin America, not with Spain. But "Latino" is by no means ideal because it has a European connotation, also. The term comes from "Latin," which was, of course, a European language.
On what she prefers to be called ethnically in "Unite and Overcome!" https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-1997/unite-and-overcome in Teaching Tolerance (Spring 1997)

Calum Worthy photo
C.G. Jung photo

“Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true."”

I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.
Man and His Symbols (1964)

Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Marjorie Taylor Greene photo
Isaac Mashman photo

“People get too big to do the little things and then wonder why they don't have the big results.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11882368/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_qt_sm#quotes

David Bowie photo
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“It's a pleasant change to be in a country that isn't ruled by its people.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Source: To Alfredo Stroessner, the Paraguayan dictator.

Allisyn Ashley Arm photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“Ideas kill people.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 180

Muhammad photo

“Be my witness, O God, that I have conveyed your message to your people.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Final sermon

Jack Kirby photo

“I feel that story, first. I know those people, first. When I put them down they've already lived.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

an archival video clip included in With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, a 2010 documentary, beginning at 17:50

Mikhail Bakunin photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Alexander Dubček photo
Jean-Michel Cousteau photo
Laozi photo

“To lead people walk behind them.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
Mark Twain photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“Business People Are Idealists And Path Setters They Take The Chance For Themselves And Others”

Alireza Kohany (1993) Musician, Actor, Entrepreneur

Source: https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_To_Become_A_Digital_Marketing_Expert/FAjfDwAAQBAJ

Barack Obama photo

“When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn’t matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can’t work.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech at political rally on November 2, 2018. Source: Obama rips hecklers: Why are the people who won the last election ‘so mad all the time?' https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/03/obama-rips-hecklers-why-are-people-who-won-last-election-so-mad-all-time/
2018

Barack Obama photo

“But I believe that engagement is a more powerful force than isolation, and the changes we are making can help improve the lives of the Cuban people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

Barack Obama photo

“Nobody represents America’s values better than the American people, and I believe this contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Knowledgeable persons are strangers because of the many ignorant people around them.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

Ronald Reagan photo

“Those mujahideen are freedom fighters. Those are people fighting for their own country and not wanting to become a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which came in and established a government of its choosing there, without regard to the feelings of the Afghans.”

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

As quoted in REAGAN HINTING AT ARMS FOR AFGHAN REBELS https://web.archive.org/web/20150524080811/https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/10/world/reagan-hinting-at-arms-for-afghan-rebels.html (10 March 1981)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Zafar Mirzo photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo

“Only sneaky people and impostors can oppose the progress of sciences and can discredit them, because they are the only ones who are harmed by the sciences.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Source: Speech at the Academy of Berlin of 27 January 1772 (inside Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi, Saggio sopra i principali metodi d'istruire i fanciulli https://books.google.it/books?id=BUdCqC_j9z8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=it&pg=PA12#v=onepage&q&f=false - 1819 - pp. 12-13 )

Park Geun-hye photo
Desiderius Erasmus photo

“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Words from the Wise : Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said (2007) by Rosemarie Jarski, p. 312. From The Praise of Folly.

Chloé Zhao photo
Tadeusz Mazowiecki photo

“We, as a people, must surmount the sense of hopelessness and confront the challenge of the moment - namely, the tasks of extricating ourselves from economic disaster and reconstructing our state.”

Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927–2013) Polish politician and prime minister

"Inaugural address of Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki" https://polishfreedom.pl/en/document/statement-inaugural-address-of-the-prime-minister-tadeusz-mazowiecki-delivered-at-the-seym-session-on-12th-september-1989 (12 September 1989)

Yuval Noah Harari photo
Plato photo
Shavkat Mirziyoyev photo

“It should be noted first and foremost that any nation, any people with the great goal of building a free and just life of a just society in its country, is going through a difficult, thorny and complex path of development.”

Shavkat Mirziyoyev (1957) President of Uzbekistan (2016-present)

Interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the «Yangi Uzbekiston» https://thediplomaticinsight.com/interview-president-of-the-republic-of-uzbekistan-shavkat-mirziyoyev/ (19 August 2021)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
David Wheeler (computer scientist) photo

“Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”

David Wheeler (computer scientist) (1927–2004) British computer scientist

Trust, Complexity and Control: Confidence in a Convergent World, Cofta, Piotr, 2007-09-27, John Wiley & Sons, 9780470517840, en https://books.google.com/books?id=xRLqGKY8axwC&q=compatibility+is+deliberately+repeating+the+mistakes+of+others&pg=PA73,

Robert P. Reed photo

“I've had so many incredible experiences and I've been influenced by so many people I've served, I see this as a new chapter. I'm living out something that I'm convinced is what God wants me to do, and living out God's will for me has been the joy of my life.”

Robert P. Reed (1959) American auxiliary bishop and religious servant

Bishop Robert Reed: Living God's will 'has been the joy of my life' https://thebostonpilot.com/article.asp?ID=177278 (August 26, 2016)

John Lennon photo

“If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Playboy interview (1980)

Park So-dam photo

“People want to see it because although it’s not a pretty scene that the movie is reflecting; it still is the reality that we live in, and it just portrays and exemplifies the life that we live in as it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Park So-dam (1991) South Korean actress

On why Parasite has been a tremendous success in South Korea in "PARASITE Interview: Park So-dam on Failure, Family, and "Appa" Song Kang-ho" in Screen Anarchy (21 October 2019) https://screenanarchy.com/2019/10/parasite-interview-park-so-dam-on-bong-joon-ho-and-song-kang-ho.html