Quotes about people
page 51

Richelle Mead photo
Fannie Flagg photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

Ned Vizzini photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Desmond Tutu photo

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 255

Jenny Han photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Lionel Shriver photo
Edna O'Brien photo
Victor Hugo photo
Henry Rollins photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Doris Kearns Goodwin photo
Lionel Shriver photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Khushwant Singh photo
Jodi Picoult photo
William Faulkner photo
Robert Anton Wilson photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Jonathan Maberry photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Meg Wolitzer photo
Jennifer Weiner photo
William Goldman photo

“You don't want to be rude but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there.


(Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)”

William Goldman (1931–2018) American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

Source: Adventures In The Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood

“People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn't spoken.”

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Ann Beattie photo
Byron Katie photo

“We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to tbe true in the moment.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Graham Greene photo

“Sooner or later…one has to take sides – if one is to remain human.”

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 230
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

Richard Dawkins photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Scott Adams photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on. It's perfectly normal.”

Jeremy Marsh, Chapter 7, p. 113
Variant: I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on. It's perfectly normal.
Source: 2000s, True Believer (2005)

Umberto Eco photo
Robert Fulghum photo
Rob Sheffield photo
Nora Ephron photo
David Levithan photo

“Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Sara Shepard photo

“Hell is other people.”

Source: Pretty Little Liars

William Faulkner photo
Sam Harris photo

“No culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs.”

Sam Harris in * 2006
September
The Temple Of Reason
Bethany
Saltman
The Sun
0744-9666
http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/369/the_temple_of_reason?page=3
2014-05-04
2000s
Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

John Wesley photo

“Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

As quoted in The Peaceful Path of Prosperity : Practical and Spiritual Approaches to Enrich Your Life with Your Inner Wealth (2001) by Danny Babineaux; not found in any record of Wesley before 2001.
Misattributed
Variant: I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.

Eudora Welty photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie photo
Kazuo Ishiguro photo

“People always wanted someone to blame, didn't they?”

Eileen Wilks (1952) fiction writer

Source: On the Prowl

Helen Oyeyemi photo
Haruki Murakami photo
George MacDonald photo

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

As quoted in The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O'Day

Henry Rollins photo

“Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner
but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Variant: Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but i feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people then i feel on my owm.

Leo Tolstoy photo
Marilyn Monroe photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Edward Gibbon photo

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

Volume 1, Chapter 2 "Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire, in the Age of the Antonines" http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume1/chap2.htm. The portion regarding the views of the religions of the time taken by various constituencies has been misreported as Gibbon's own assessment of religion generally. See Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990), pp. 34–35.
The bold text has been misattributed to Lucretius and Seneca the Younger.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Context: The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
Context: The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials.

Jodi Picoult photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
Robert Greene photo
Andy Warhol photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Doris Lessing photo

“Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Source: The Grass is Singing

John Kennedy Toole photo

“I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.”

Scott Douglas (1963) American wheelchair tennis player

Source: Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

James Madison photo

“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Virginia Resolution of 1798 (24 December 1798) http://www.constitution.org/cons/virg1798.htm
Federalist No. 46 (29 January 1788) Full text at Wikisource
1790s
Variant: [The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Context: That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government; as well as the particular organization, and positive provisions of the federal constitution; and the other of which acts, exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.
Context: Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Zadie Smith photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Bill Bryson photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Ned Vizzini photo
Carl Hiaasen photo
Joseph Campbell photo
Jennifer Egan photo
Evelyn Waugh photo

“But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Variant: When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.

Richelle Mead photo