Quotes about people
page 59

“Why is it that you have to warn people about who you are?”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

“I just tell people what they already know but are afraid to admit to themselves.”

Jo, Chapter 25, p. 203
Source: 2009, Safe Haven (2010)

“If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God, Boy

“The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been anperson. All people belong to aexcept me. Not to belong to amakes you too lonesome.”

Carson McCullers book The Member of the Wedding

Source: The Member of the Wedding

Time

“The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

Education

“You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound You don't win with a lot of treble.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound You don't win with a lot of treble. This isn't about quality. It's about volume. This isn't about music. This is about winning. You stomp the competition with the bass line. You rattle windows. You drop the melody line, and shout the lyrics. You put in foul language and come down hard on each cussword. You dominate. This is really about power.

Music

“Life is boring. People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don’t know why, and if we do find out why, it’s decades later and knowing why doesn’t matter any more.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Life

“Don't listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never taking any risks themselves, can only see other people's failures.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Failure

“Now do you see why war irritates me? It's always the same. A lot of people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn't seem to occur to people.”

David Eddings book Belgarath the Sorcerer

Source: Belgarath the Sorcerer

War

“The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Lie, Feeling

“Republicans don't like people to talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don't talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Housing

“Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Silence, Water, Loneliness

“Question: When you’re one of the few people who can do something to fix a problem, just how responsible does that make you for it? Answer: It’s how you choose to answer that question that defines you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Question, Problem

“the only people who have proof of their sanity are those who have been discharged from mental institutions”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: Take Today: The Executive as Dropout

“People tell stories and it's up to those who listen whether to believe or not."

"Shouldn't the storyteller believe it."

"The storyteller should tell it.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Gift

“It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Home

“Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”

Peter F. Drucker book The Essential Drucker

Source: The Essential Drucker

“since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Light, Sun

“And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?”

Meg Wolitzer book The Interestings

Source: The Interestings

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Dale Carnegie, quoted in Permission to Play : Taking Time to Renew Your Smile (2003) by Jill Murphy Long, p. 69

Motivational, Success, Happy, Inspirational

“The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Truth

“Maybe it’s the other way around,” Jason suggested. “Maybe people with special gifts show up when bad things are happening because that’s when
they’re needed most.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Way

“One thing that's clear in the Scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Source: Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals

Peace

“What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

“In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

Age, Sleep

“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

World, Education

“I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

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

Source: Collected Stories

Love

“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”

Shirley MacLaine (1934) American actress

Don't Fall Off the Mountain http://books.google.com/books?id=f6yc35pUhEwC&q=%22The+more+I+traveled+the+more+I+realized+that+fear+makes+strangers+of+people+who+should+be+friends%22&pg=PA160#v=onepage (1970) <br class="br">Variant: The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

Fear

“You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“Without heroes, we're all plain people, and don't know how far we can go.”

Bernard Malamud The Natural

The Natural (1952) p. 154 http://books.google.com/books?id=wCWhegoGUxwC&q=%22Without+heroes+we're+all+plain+people+and+don't+know+how+far+we+can+go%22&pg=PA148#v=onepage

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

“We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Source: Selected Stories

Time

“There is nothing I dislike more in the world than people who care more about ideology than they do about people.”

Jon Ronson book So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Source: So You've Been Publicly Shamed

World

“Don't get trapped into thinking people are halves instead of wholes.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

Thinking

“Some people fall apart when they get hurt. Puddle into apathy and despair and never recover. They wait all their lives for someone to come along and rescue them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Waiting, Hurt, Despair

“Intelligence is so damn rare and the people who have it often have such a bad time with it that they get bitter or propagandistic and then it's not much use.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Intelligence, Time

“I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

Source: Postcards from the Edge

Envy, Personality

“I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

“There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?”

Dan Chaon (1964) American writer

Source: Among the Missing

“People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

“An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Dreams, Time

“My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 190

Death, Fear, Communication

“You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Time

“Don’t worry about it. We’re used to being told to go screw ourselves. And that’s from the people who actually like us. You should hear what our enemies say. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

“People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.”

China Miéville book Railsea

Source: Railsea

Star, Light

“People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don't acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Invisibility

Memory, Time

“Plenty of people are good-looking. That doesn't make them interesting or intriguing or cool.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.”

Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer

Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Thinking

“There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

“Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Variant: A bookstore is one of the many pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

Thinking

“Everyone has sorrow. Everyone has obligations. Everyone keeps going. You lean on the people who love you. You do the best you can, and you keep going.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Love

“There's a lot you can't tell about people, looking in from the outside"

-Hanna”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Unbelievable

“I'm staying," Henry said, annoyed.

"Why?"

"Because, if I leave, it would be like abandoning two mentally challenged people in a nuclear waste dump.”

Lisa Lutz (1970) US author

Source: Curse of the Spellmans

“She liked people. Me, I can take them or leave them, but mostly leave them.”

Sue Townsend (1946–2014) English writer and humorist

Source: The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year

“The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Women

“I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Sex, Way, Thinking

“I found myself jealous of the people who wrote the books. They were dead and they were still taking up my time. Who did they think they were?”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Books, Thinking, Time, Dead

“You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them.”

Larry King (1933) American television and radio host

Source: How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere (1994), Ch. 1: Talk 101, p. 28

Thinking

“It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor, always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.

-Hephaestus”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Personality

“Powerful people have no regrets.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

“All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.”

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

Parting

“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“Sex is glorious, it's how we all got here, and it's most people's favourite activity.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html

Sex

“If you rely exclusively on the advice of others, you may make terrible mistakes. Your heart knows what you need. Other people have other agendas.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Only Love Is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited

Heart

“You can tell if people are following Jesus, because they are feeding the poor, sharing their wealth, and trying to get everyone medical insurance.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Wealth

“Do you think people have noticed that I'm around?”
“I notice when you're not. Does that count?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Thinking

“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

“Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Men, God, Thinking, Effort

“I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”

Jim Butcher book Vignette

Source: Vignette

Hell

“People don't save other people. People save themselves.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

“It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Hurt

“Sheriff Mossberg was one of those people who never stop speaking until
they are finished, so by this time he was saying: “Do you understand
these rights?”
“No, sir! Mi ne komprenas Dumbtalk!”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Shadow Souls

Understanding, Time

“I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Books, Feeling, Joy

“Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It's not like you can blame a mattress when people don't tie it down tight enough.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Parent

“Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

“Makes sense to me. Sometimes starting over is exactly what a person needs. And I think it's admirable. A lot of people don't have the courage it takes to do something like that.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Courage, Thinking, Sense, Personality

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Cooper (29 November 1802)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)
Variant: If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Happiness, Future