“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist
Quoted in "Women of the Hall: Rosa Parks," http://womenshalloffame.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=117 Women's National Hall of Fame (undated); said upon her 77th birthday (1990-02-04)
“Most of the world's problems could be avoided if people just said what they meant.”
Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor
Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
“You cannot save people, you can only love them.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Variant: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”
Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner
Source: The Kite Runner
“A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul”
Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer
“Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
“We're actors — we're the opposite of people!”
Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor
Source: 1910s, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (pg. 118)
“I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
Response upon being questioned as to his IQ, in interview with Deborah Solomon "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 62–75.
Collected Works
Source: A Letter to American Workingmen: From the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia
“I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
Source: Eyes: Poetry, 1967-1971
“I've always believed that a person is smart. It's people that are stupid.”
Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor
Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed
“I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time”
Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher
Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
“People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.”
Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician
Often attributed to Thatcher, but originally said by Jesse Carr, head of Teamsters Union Local, in Newsweek, Vol. 88 (1976), p. 77
Misattributed
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time
"Me and My House" in Harper's (November 1955); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Source: The Fire Next Time
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath
Remark made by von Neumann as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, as mentioned by Franz L. Alt at the end of "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945--1947", Communications of the ACM, volume 15, issue 7, July 1972, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery, p. 694.
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer
Source: Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays
Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
Source: Wall and Piece (2005)
“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Variant: No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care
“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
"Everybody Knows"
I'm Your Man (1988)
Source: The Leonard Cohen Collection
“Only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.”
Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director
“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer
“You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about.”
John Cleese (1939) actor from England
“People go to the movies instead of moving!”
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Tom, Scene Six
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)
Context: Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!
“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer
“it's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people”
Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
Source: The Calvin And Hobbes: Tenth Anniversary Book
“If people would know how little brain is ruling the world, they would die of fear.”
Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
This is probably the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln. Despite it being cited variously as from an 1856 speech, or a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, there are no known contemporary records or accounts substantiating that he ever made the statement. The earliest known appearance is October 29, 1886 in the Milwaukee Daily Journal http://anotherhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/fooling-people-earlier.html. It later appeared in the New York Times on August 26 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30817FF3E5413738DDDAF0A94D0405B8784F0D3 and August 27 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E15FF3E5413738DDDAE0A94D0405B8784F0D3, 1887. The saying was repeated several times in newspaper editorials later in 1887. In 1888 and, especially, 1889, the saying became commonplace, used in speeches, advertisements, and on portraits of Lincoln. In 1905 and later, there were attempts to find contemporaries of Lincoln who could recall Lincoln saying this. Historians have not, generally, found these accounts convincing. For more information see two articles in For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association, "'You Can Fool All of the People' Lincoln Never Said That", by Thomas F. Schwartz ( V. 5, #4, Winter 2003, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/5-4.pdf) and "A New Look at 'You Can Fool All of the People'" by David B. Parker ( V. 7, #3, Autumn 2005, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/7-3.pdf); also the talk page. The statement has also sometimes been attributed to P. T. Barnum, although no references to this have been found from the nineteenth century. <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. <br class="br">You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. <br class="br">You can fool all the people some time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time. <br class="br">Disputed
“The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think.”
David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker
Variant: The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think.
Bill Skarsgård (1990) Swedish actor
Bill Skarsgard on ‘IT’ and Tapping into His Fears to Create a Terrifying New Pennywise http://collider.com/bill-skarsgard-pennywise-it-movie-interview/#images (July 28, 2017)
“That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon
Words said when Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon (20 July 1969) One Small Step, transcript of Apollo 11 Moon landing https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11.step.html. In the actual sound recordings he apparently fails to say "a" before "man" and says: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This was generally considered by many to simply be an error of omission on his part. Armstrong long insisted he did say "a man" but that it was inaudible. Prior to new evidence supporting his claim, he stated a preference for the "a" to appear in parentheses when the quote is written. The debate continues on the matter, as "Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon" at BBC News (3 June 2009) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8081817.stm reports that more recent analysis by linguist John Olsson and author Chris Riley with higher quality recordings indicates that he did not say "a". <br class="br">Variant: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker
Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011. <br class="br">2011
Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter
Launch.com, November 2, 2000<!-- site no longer exists -->
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Source: On Coalition Government (1945)
Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader
" Message to the people of the United States of America http://www.afghan-web.com/documents/let-masood.html" (1998).
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
“On National-Socialist Germany And Her Contribution Towards Peace.” Speech to the representatives of the international press at Geneva on September 28. 1933. German League of Nations Union News Service, PRO, FO 371/16728. Included within Völkerbund: Journal for International Politics, Ausgaben 1-103, 1933, p.16
1930s
Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician
Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq2aN9tYE by Penny Daniels (1989)
Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress
Los Angeles Magazine Vol. 44, No. 11 (November 1999), p. 169
Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards.
Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist
Letter (1811-05-31) referring to the Peninsular War [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory
from Non-resistance or struggle http://tsiolkovsky.org/en/the-cosmic-philosophy/non-resistance-or-struggle-1935/ -- a manuscript written in 1935
Morgan Freeman (1937) American actor, film director, and narrator
Source: [Stern, Marlow, Janbuary 28, 2014, Morgan Freeman on God, Satan, and How the Human Race Has ‘Become A Parasite’, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/morgan-freeman-kerry-washington-celebrate-oscars-science-at-breakthrough-prize-ceremony-1064160, The Daily Beast, New York, December 4, 2017]