Quotes about people
page 63
“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”
Source: Make Lemonade
“Because sometimes people who seem good
end up being not as good as you might have hoped.”
Variant: Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right.”
Paulo Coelho
(1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
“Surely the earth can be saved
by all the people
who insist
on love.”
Alice Walker
(1944) American author and activist
Source: Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful: Poems
Aldous Huxley
(1894–1963) English writer
"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)
Source: Do What You Will: Twelve Essays
Context: Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Rudyard Kipling
(1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
Source: Debits And Credits
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Henry Ford
(1863–1947) American industrialist
Patrick Vlaskovits, " Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast," in Harvard Business Review, August 29, 2011.
Misattributed
Larry Winget
(1952) American motivational speaker
Source: Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.”
Anne Tyler
(1941) American novelist
Louis L'Amour
(1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer
Source: The Lonesome Gods
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas."
"That is because you have no brains" answered the girl. "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."
The Scarecrow sighed.
"Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."
“sudden, spontaneous eye contact is a sign that two people should talk.”
Source: The Celestine Prophecy
“People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody.”
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“We don't stop loving people just because we hate them, but we don't stop hating them either.”
Jonathan Tropper
(1970) American writer
Source: One Last Thing Before I Go
Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
“People here worship the sun." "Yes, but my people worship the God who made the sun.”
Gilbert Morris
(1929–2016) American writer
Source: Till Shiloh Comes
“If people don't want to come to the ballpark how are you going to stop them?”
Yogi Berra
(1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach
The Yogi book: I really didn't say everything I said!, Workman Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0761110909, p. 36.
The quote "If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them" first appears in 1952, credited to music impresario Sol Hurok. It was first attributed to Berra in 1962. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/30/stop-em/
Disputed
John F. Kennedy
(1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
John F. Kennedy: "Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America" (26 February 1962) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9075&st=&st1=<!-- Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project -->
1962
Context: We welcome the views of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
“If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them," said Pooh.”
Source: The Tao of Pooh
Max Lucado
(1955) American clergyman and writer
Source: Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions
Karl Pilkington
(1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer
Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington
Richard Rohr
(1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
“Do not make your mind a dumping ground for other people's garbage.”
Ezra Taft Benson
(1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Lyndon B. Johnson
(1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)
Context: This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here. This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country; to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit; will be the first that are admitted to this land. The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system. Under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants. Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place. Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents. This system violated the basic principle of American democracy; the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country. Today, with my signature, this system is abolished. We can now believe that it will never again shadow the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege. Our beautiful America was built by a nation of strangers. From a hundred different places or more they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources; because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. And from this experience, almost unique in the history of nations, has come America's attitude toward the rest of the world. We, because of what we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up; a world where no country rules another and all countries can deal with the basic problems of human dignity and deal with those problems in their own way. Now, under the monument which has welcomed so many to our shores, the American nation returns to the finest of its traditions today. The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung.
Upamanyu Chatterjee
(1959) Indian writer
Source: English, August: An Indian Story
Guy Debord
(1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)
“A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to.”
Banksy
pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
Source: Wall and Piece (2007)
“Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.”
Source: The Dwarves of Death
Ilona Andrews
American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Burn for Me
Source: The Martian Chronicles
“There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.”
Source: The Art of Seduction
“What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, “It’s all your fault!”
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running