Quotes about people
page 61

“When to people tell the same lie…"
"They are working together," Will finished”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

“Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were.
And what we remember.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

Help

“People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

“Happens to me all the time… People are always underestimating my dumbness.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Motor Mouth

Time

“It took turns that people couldn’t foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Understanding, Question

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing…. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Success, Personality

“Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? 'Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Flowers

“It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.”

Jennifer Haigh (1968) Novelist

Source: The Condition

Life, Friendship, Learning, Loyalty

“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”

Orson Scott Card book Pathfinder

Source: Pathfinder

“The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould”

Oswald Chambers book My Utmost for His Highest

Source: My Utmost for His Highest

Star

“People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.”

Lisa Unger book Fragile

Source: Fragile

Chance

“When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out.

But it's a lie.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Lie, Hurt

“Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Source: B is for Burglar

Men, Personality

“People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

Thinking

“That's the thing about people who think they hate computers … What they really hate are lousy programmers.”

Larry Niven book Oath of Fealty

Oath of Fealty (1982) (co-written with Jerry Pournelle)

Hate, Thinking

“But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

Life, Thinking, Waiting

“There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you’ve come specifically to read them or not.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

Books, Thinking, Reading

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”

Anne Tyler book The Tin Can Tree

Source: The Tin Can Tree

Love

“People of excellence go the extra mile to do what's right.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

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

“To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Hope, Idea, Freedom

“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15

Thinking, Freedom

“Passing time isn't a steady thing. People try to measure it, but some days seem to have years packed into them, and others pass in the blink of an eye. Some days matter, and others don't.”

Blue Balliett book The Calder Game

Source: The Calder Game

Time

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 193
Context: For as long as there been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as a celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night.

Star, Universe

“TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

Source: JPod (2006)

Stupidity, Time

“Save your rejections so that later when you are famous you can show them to people and laugh.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Heart Touching

“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Love

“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

David Baldacci book The Camel Club

Source: The Camel Club

Books, Reading, Peaceful

“As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Color

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Happiness, Search, Hurt, Cry

“The crazy people of the world… shouldn't get to win. If God won't make it better after they do have their shitty little victories, then ordinary people have to. They have to try, at least.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

God, World, Victory

“You haven't lived until you've basked in the adoration of people.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

“What makes you walk past thirty-thousand people without a second glance, and then you look at the thirty-thousandth-and-first person and know you'll never take your eyes off her again?”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Past, Personality

“People who really appreciated animals always asked their names.”

Lilian Jackson Braun book The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern

Source: The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern

Animals

“People don’t realize how easy life is to change. You just get on the bus.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Life, Change

“Dang! Snake people know how to make bundt cake.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Blessed are the idiots, for they are happiest people on earth.”

Barry Hughart book Bridge of Birds

Source: Bridge of Birds

“I believe in Hell… but it's here on earth." He shakes his head. "Good people and bad people. As if it were this easy. Everyone is both of these at once.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Hell

“Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Love

“I'd been willing to kill for the people I loved for a very long time; now I had to start living for them.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Love, Time

“You can't just throw people at all your problems, dear.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Astonishing X-Men, Volume 2: Dangerous

Problem

“Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.”

Eva Ibbotson book The Secret of Platform 13

Variant: It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.
Source: The Secret of Platform 13

Personality

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance

Marriage, Sense

“It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just didn't go together except in dire emergencies, if then.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Truth, Lie

“People think of hearts when they think of love, but a heart is a bloody organ in the body. It doesn't have any emotions. It's like a metaphor for love that has nothing to do with what love actually is.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything

Love, Thinking, Heart

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”

Patricia A. McKillip The Bell at Sealey Head

Source: The Bell at Sealey Head

Books

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Bad things happen to good people all the time. It sucks. It's not fair but then much of life isn't fair. It's how you live that matters. It's how you deal with the bumps in the road.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Echoes at Dawn

Life, Time

“People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick.”

Scott Westerfeld book Peeps

Source: Peeps

“people diminish me;
the longer I sit and listen to them
the more empty I feel but I don't get
the idea that they feel empty, I feel
that they enjoy the sound from their
mouths.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Bone Palace Ballet

Feeling, Idea

“he's a genius, she's a genius, wow, you know alot of geniuses, you should meet some stupid people sometime, you might learn something”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Stupidity, Learning

“I know about forgiving people and loving them anyway, even after they hurt you.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Home Front

Love, Forgiveness, Hurt

“Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Children, Age

“Good girls don't hurt other people's feelings. Good girls are not overly aggressive, competitive, or boastful. Good girls please others. But what good girls are good for is another question.”

Susan Jane Gilman (1924) American writer

Source: Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess

Feeling, Girl, Question, Hurt

“You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us.”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

Religion

“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

“Knowing who you really are and dressing the part -- with an air of amused recklessness -- is life affirming for you and life enhancing for other people.”

Simon Doonan (1952) British businessman

Source: Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You

Life, Parting

“I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.”

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

Way, Question

“This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

World

“The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: The Quintessence of Ibsenism

Truth

“It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.”

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

Letter to http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1489 George Washington (4 January 1786) 1780s Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Business

“People who prefer e-books… think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel.”

Joe Queenan (1950) American writer

Source: One for the Books

Children, Books, Thinking

“And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States

World, Thinking

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, Dogs, Fish

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Beauty, Home, Country

“What's this outfit? You can't afford clothes? Are you wearing other peoples?"
Helen Plum”

Janet Evanovich Two for the Dough

Source: Two for the Dough

Clothes

“I like long walks, especially when they're taken by people who annoy me.”

Fred Allen (1894–1956) comedian

“I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Love, Learning

“What kind of justice is this?
Where the poor go to prison and the rich go free.
Where witnesses are rented, bought, or bribed.
Where people are tried not because of any criminal actions but because of their political beliefs.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Justice

“She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.”

Susan Minot (1956) American author and screenwriter

Source: Evening

Change, Personality

“If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.”

Anthony Swofford book Jarhead

Source: Jarhead

Love, Disappointment, Behavior, Hurt

“It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

C'est d'actes et non d'idées que vivent les peuples. Series I: Sérénus http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/S%C3%A9r%C3%A9nus As quoted in The Ironic Temper : Anatole France and His Time (1932) The Literary Life (1888-1892) Variant: It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Idea

“Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Almansor: A Tragedy (1823), as translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
Variant translations:
Wherever books are burned, men in the end will also burn.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
Where they burn books, they will also burn people.
It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.
Where they burn books, they also burn people.
Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men.
Variant: Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

Books