Quotes about people
page 60

“All people are born alike… except Republicans and Democrats.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want
to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Love, Men

“Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

“Certainly it constitutes bad news if the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

Life

“On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Business

“It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Drink

“A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”

Robert B. Cialdini (1945) American social psychologist

Source: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Behavior, Success

“Some marriages are made in heaven,
Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

Marriage

“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Evil

“yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Love, Way

“You just don’t expect to meet dead people.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters

Dead

“You can, t make yourself happy by causing other peoples misery

-Tyler Perry
The Family That Preys”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

Variant: Are You Living or Just Existing?"

-Tyler Perry
The Family That Preys

Happiness, Family

“If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Men, Beauty, Shoe, Madness

“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 12.
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 13-14.
Context: Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white women who are busy publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism" remain patronizing and condescending when they relate to black women. This is not surprising given that frequently their discourse is aimed solely in the direction of a white audience and the focus solely on changing attitudes rather than addressing racism in a historical and political context. They make us the "objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As "objects," we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet free of the type of remain intact if they are to maintain their authoritative positions.
Context: Racist stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black woman are operative myths in the minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization.... By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength, white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the scope of their understanding of women's overall social status in the United States. Privileged feminists have largely been unable to speak to, with, and for diverse groups of women because they either do not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and focus on class and gender, they tend to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that race is important and then proceed to offer an analysis in which race is not considered.

Women, Men

“What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.”

Mark Vonnegut (1947) American physician and writer

Books, World, Imagination, Reading

“Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

“Most people fail to realize that in life, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Life, Money

“The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel

History

“People like to say being gay isn't like skin color, isn't anything physical. They tell us we always have the option of hiding.
But if that's true, why do they always find us?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Color

“Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.”

James Baldwin If Beale Street Could Talk

Source: If Beale Street Could Talk

School

“Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. … Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Family, Way

“Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.”

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

“I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.”

George Plimpton (1927–2003) journalist, writer, editor, actor

“Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

Beauty

“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

God

“People want pretty much the same things: They wanted to be happy. Most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed they lay in the past.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Happiness, Thinking, Past, Future

“Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking some day.”

Dorothy Koomson book My Best Friend's Girl

Source: My Best Friend's Girl

Heart, Hurt

“What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

Change

“from Bill Clinton speech-
People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power…”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2000s
Variant: The world has always been more impressed by the power of our [America's] example than by the example of our power.
Context: Former U. S. president Bill Clinton has urged newspaper editors to focus more attention on the depletion of the world's oil reserves. In a June 17 speech to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton said a "significant number of petroleum geologists" have warned that the world could be nearing the peak in oil production. Clinton suggested that at current consumption rates (now more than 30 billion barrels per year, according to the International Energy Agency), the world could be out of "recoverable oil" in 35 to 50 years, elevating the risk of "And then finally, and I think most important of all, more important than the deficit, more important then healthcare, more important than anything, is we have got to do something about our energy strategy because if we permit the climate to continue to warm at an unsustainable rate, and if we keep on doing what we're doing 'til we're out of oil and we haven't made the transition, then it's inconceivable to me that our children and grandchildren will be able to maintain the American way of life and that the world won't be much fuller of resource-based wars of all kinds.”

“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Color, Clothes, Dead

“There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Love, Children, Books, World

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

Fear, Literature, Evil

“I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Variant: You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.
Source: The Great Gatsby

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Thinking, Time

“Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.”

Henning Mankell (1948–2015) Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist

Knowledge

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

D. H. Lawrence : An Unprofessional Study (1932); also quoted in The Mirror and the Garden : Realism and Reality in the Writings of Anais Nin (1971) by Evelyn J. Hinz, p. 40

Life, Death

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.”

James Baldwin book No Name in the Street

No Name in the Street (1972)

“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Support, Thinking

“Many times I have learned that, you never judge a book by its cover. Like people, it is the inside that counts.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Learning, Time

“Love overlooks a person’s faults. That’s not always easy, but love believes the best in every person. Anybody can return evil for evil, but God wants His people to help heal wounded hearts.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

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

Love, God, Evil, Help

“When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Learning

“There are two ways to stay safe, Reen's voice whispered to her. Either be so quiet and harmless that people ignore you, or be so dangerous that they're terrified of you.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

Way

“The most content people are those who expect nothing, who have ceased to dream.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Dreams

“Sometimes good people have to do terrible things.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Source: Treasure Box

“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Understanding

“Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

Marriage

“History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Art, History

“The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Happiness, Feeling, Time

“Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: And Then There Were None: A Mystery Play in Three Acts

“Was it better to think you had lost everything, and to start over? Or easier to know that the people you loved were alive, even if you could never see them again?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, Thinking

“I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.”

Toni Morrison book God Help the Child

Source: God Help the Child

Music, Thinking, Silence

“Most people underestimate eyes. They're infinite. You look someone straight in the eye and your whole soul can be sucked out in a nanosecond. Other people's eyes are limitless and that's what scares me.”

Sophie Kinsella book Finding Audrey

Source: Finding Audrey

Soul

“Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

“Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t? - Damon”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

“Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Time

“People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Thinking

“And she finds it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Love, Personality

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

Youth, Way, Study, Painting

“Um, Dr. Alexander, there’s a couple out here who say they’re related to you. They…um…they’re biker people. (Nurse)
Hey, Julian. Tell Attila the Hun here that we’re okay so we can come and ooh and aah over the babies. (Eros)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Baby

“Do you think if people knew how crazy you really were, no one would ever talk to you?”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thinking

“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.”

James Baldwin book Go Tell It on the Mountain

Source: Go Tell It on the Mountain

World

“The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

“But its not funny. Not to people who've been told they're losers their whole lives and believe they will never be anything else.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
Context: "Ah." The Blue Man nodded. "Well people often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps. This, for me, is the second. And for you the first."