Quotes about people
page 67

“Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Failure, Success, Business

“In a population of hundreds of millions, such a small number of people is a mere drop in the bucket… but enough drops can make any bucket overflow”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnDivided

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Life, God

“There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

World

“And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

The Irresistible Revolution (2006)
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

World, Way, Lovers, Thinking

“People say that where there’s life, there’s hope, and I have no quarrel with that, but I also believe the reverse.
There is hope, therefore I live.”

Stephen King book Revival

Source: Revival

Life, Hope

“There are two people in every photograph: the photographer and the viewer”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

“Most people don't cry when they're upset or frightened, but rather when they're frustrated. Your frustration is understandable. You've been through a most trying time." -Hodge”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Understanding, Time, Cry

“You're not asking me to guess the mind of Matrim Cauthon, are you?" Elayne asked. "I'm convinced that Mat only acts simple so that people will let him get away with more.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

“People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Behavior, Learning

“Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Dreams, Suffering

“What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

Heart

“…but then I am unlike other people I dare say.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Red tape has killed more people than bullets…”

Ben Bova (1932) American science fiction and science writer

Source: Millennium

“Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

Flowers, Waiting, Dead

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Money, Motivational, Deep

“Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in The Films of Barbra Streisand (2001) by Christopher Nickens and Karen Swenson
Variant: Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

Hate, Way, Success, Envy

“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

TV talk with Prime Minister Macmillan (31 August 1959) <br class="br"> "Selected Quotations", Eisenhower Archives, Eisenhower Library, 2007-04-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20070208232736/http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ss1.htm, 2007-02-08 http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ss1.htm, <br class="br">1950s

Peace, Way, Thinking

“… some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Dogs, Way, Affliction

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Thinking

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Not found in James's writings. Earliest similar cite is to Episcopal Methodist Bishop W. F. Oldham in 1906. Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/05/10/merely/. A related quote is in James's 1907 book, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: "Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it." <br class="br">Misattributed

Thinking

“I feel like I'm lost in an anime movie" I said, as Coyote picked the thing up. "One of the tentacle-monster ones." Most of them were X-rated and ended up with a lot of dead people.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Feeling, Animals, Dead

“The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

"Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes" 
The Illiterate Digest (1924)
Context: The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.

“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."

[(The White House, July 25, 1961)]”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Housing

“If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Thinking

“Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.

That would fix a lot of people.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Summer

“True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

Source: The Man Without Qualities

Truth, Decision, Falseness

“He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Guy

“You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

Endron, systems specialist of the Far Realm
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997)

“Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Source: Spirited Away, Volume 1

“He wasn't in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren't their fault.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

World

“I'm a hacker!" Cadel protested. "I don't poison people! I don't blow them up!”

Catherine Jinks book Evil Genius

Source: Evil Genius

“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it”

Edith Schaeffer (1914–2013) American writer

Perfection

“You people with hearts,' he said once, 'have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Heart

“My Life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Life, Heart

“Well, I get under people's skins. It's a gift I have, what can I say?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

“Why was the judgement of the disapproving so valuable? Who said that their good opinions tended to be any more rational than those of generally pleasant people?”

Shannon Hale book Austenland

Source: Austenland

“… you may be able to sway people's heads. But you can't sway their hearts.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Heart

“I’ve heard people say that the hardest thing in the world is to live with someone you don’t love. But I’ve always thought it would be far more difficult to live with someone who doesn’t love you.”

Amanda Stevens (1977)

Source: The Kingdom

Love, World

“I always knew there were vampires, dude,” he’d said. “Because, you know how there’s people you know who, like, always look the same, even when they’re, like, a hundred years old? Like David Bowie? That’s because they’re vampires.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

“I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Love

“Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization

Business

“Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?
Kolabati looked into his eyes. "He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.”

F. Paul Wilson (1946) novelist

Cheating

“If you think of something, do it.

Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.”

Lydia Davis (1947) American writer

Thinking

“Generosity could be as contagious as the zombie plague as long as enough people were willing to be carriers.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Reality, Dead

“As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something Fresh

Source: Something Fresh

Life, Happiness, Pleasure

“If people were more concerned with how they looked on the inside, then on the outside, the world would be a nicer place to exist.”

David Walsh (1955) Irish sports journalist

World, Beauty

“Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Hate, Fear

“those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers…”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

Love, Way, Feeling, Reading

“People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Problem

“squats are a form of torture designed by people who don’t need to do squats in the first place”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

“People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no.' You have to take time and trouble.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Love, Secret, Time

“I realized that I was really tired of people popping on and off of my property like it was a train station on the supernatural railroad.”

Charlaine Harris Dead and Gone

Source: Dead and Gone

Training

“They minute people fall in love they become liars.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Love

“All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

God, World, History

“I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

World, Change

“Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Learning, Madness

“It was always the view of my parents… that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

Parent, Weather

“Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.”

Ian Frazier (1951) author and journalist

“It means we're on your side." That's what Bonnie said. I have people on my side? What side? Am I unwittingly the face of the hoped-for rebellion? Has the mockingjay on my pin become a symbol of resistance? If so, my side's not doing too well.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Hope

“But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?”

Alexander McCall Smith book Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

Source: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

Love, Lie

“If I want my people to be free, Americans have to be free.”

Russell Means (1939–2012) Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native American people

Source: Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means

“The last introvert in a world of extroverts. Silence: my response to both emptiness and saturation. But silence frightens people. I had to learn how to talk. Out of politeness.”

Ariel Gore (1970) American writer

Source: Atlas of the Human Heart

World, Silence, Learning

“It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place--because we become better people in it.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

World, Religion

“The people who make a difference
are not the ones with the credentials
but the ones with the concern.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

“I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“See… I knew baby Marissa was quality people, look how she's eating the head off the red-headed Artemis doll. Simi need to teach her to belch fire, then introduce her to the real heifer-Goddess herself(Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Baby

“When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Love

“The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

“Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

Change, Past, Forgetting

“You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm Bob Dylan Interview

“Successful people make their decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. Failures make their decisions slowly and change their minds quickly.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success

Failure, Decision, Change, Success

“I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, "Where'd she go?" and I have to say, "I'm down here.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Shoe

“1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight.”

Mark Bittman (1950) American journalist, food writer

Source: Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes

World

“People say, "What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Sense, Effort, Time

“people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Thinking

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”

Jared Diamond (1937) American scientist and author

Source: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

History

“I suppose there are people who can pass up free guacamole, but they're either allergic to avocado or too joyless to live.”

Frank Bruni (1964) American journalist

Source: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater

“People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.”

Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbes

Source: Calvin and Hobbes

Children, Childhood

“People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Stupidity, Way, Intelligence

“That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Way

“I follow after my father, who likes to protect mankind, and I really don’t want to see a bunch of demons eating people. Call me sentimental. (Kat)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

“Lothaire:Everywhere Lothaire went, people stopped and stared. Of course, then they usually ran.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

Attributed
Source: Quoted in The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp

God

“Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

“I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, World

“Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variant: We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Silence