Quotes about people
page 82

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Fear, Help, Selfishness

“I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone.
People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Learning

“People make their own reality. That was what Praxis had taught him years ago. A hundred people can witness the exact same event, and give two hundred and three different accountings of it.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Reality

“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive. … The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of 'conservation education.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 155.
1930s
Source: Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold

Education, Justice, Problem

“New eras don't come about because of swords, they're created by the people who wield them.”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

“No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't.”

Lee Child book Nothing to Lose

Source: Nothing to Lose

“People go away and they don't come back.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Circus of the Damned

Source: Circus of the Damned

“People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 12
Calpurnia
Variant: Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.

“I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?”

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) Japanese film maker

Question, Thinking

“It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.”

Tom Perrotta book The Leftovers

Source: The Leftovers

Life, Silence

“Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

God

“People are the most difficult thing in the world to change”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

World, Change

“People who know and love the same books as you, have the road map to your soul.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Love, Books, Soul

“The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

about 1900, page 429
John of the Mountains, 1938

Tree, Light, Heart

“I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Money, Hate

“Everyone knows what falling in love is like but being in love is what people have lost. That intimacy to be in bed with somebody and just laugh and not hold anybody accountable for what they say.”

Mark Polish (1970) American film actor, screenwriter and producer

Love

“People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Thinking

“There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Love

“I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

Thinking

“Stupid people always ignored good advice”

Johanna Lindsey (1952–2019) American writer

Source: All I Need Is You

Stupidity

“But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

“People treat you as badly as you let them treat you. Key word there: let.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?”

Azar Nafisi (1955) Iranaian academic and writer

“and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Disease, Way, Communication

“The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, Sadness, Drink, Personality

“No. But I understand her. Life makes people what they are.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

Life, Understanding

“I'm not telling you that suicidal people aren't so far away from people who can get by; I'm telling you that people who can get by aren't so far away from being suicidal.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

Suicide

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

Hope, Communication, Solitude, Joy

“And after a while… I mean how do you choose? Who gets to live? Part of life is that… well, some people have to die.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Life, Parting

“To be truthful i am not entirely sure what people mean when they talk of happiness. There are moments of joy and laughter, the comfort of friendship, but enduring happiness? If it exists i have not found it”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Friendship, Happiness, Truth, Laughter

“History is is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 39

History

“I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women’s Liberation Movement’s list of things not to say to a modern woman.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Women

“Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.”

Neal Stephenson book Quicksilver

Source: Quicksilver

World, Flying

“my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Pain, World, Heart

“Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Cocaine: Impressions & Opinions

Health

“People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Something Blue

Cheating

“This is love if it's not with you, a terrible fiery something that makes people look away, and it feels like a punch in the throat.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Feeling

“I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow… I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

World, Way, Thinking, Depressing

“For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.”

Amin Maalouf book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Way

“It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, God, Forgetting

“The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.”

Eudora Welty book The Optimist's Daughter

Source: The Optimist's Daughter

“I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.”

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

Way

“You write in order to change the world… if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”

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

World, Way, Reality, Change

“I'm not sure what I am anymore… Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures… That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

Disappointment, Thinking

“I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.”

Jim Thompson book A Hell of a Woman

Source: A Hell of a Woman

Hate, World

“Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

History, Time, Success

“At first, it was hard to sit down and read the things that people were saying. A lot of people would've worked their way up to this position and would've gotten a thick skin over a few years' time. For me, though, all this happened in a few months.”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

Way, Time, Reading

“Do you love him?"
There were only a few people in the world who could ask me such insanely personal questions without getting punched. Dimitri was one of them.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Love, World, Question, Personality

“Mad people = People who stand alone and burn.
I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Madness

“I've always been a very good judge of people. That's why I like so very few of them.”

Donna VanLiere (1966) American writer

Source: The Christmas Note

“There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“First of all, Iit’s all people like you. And that’s what’s so scary. you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Books, Disappointment, Nature, Grass

“I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Youth, Freedom, Time, Joy

“That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: For a Few Demons More

Love, Fear, Failure, Decision

“Only people who're positive enough to have friends have enemies. When you're as glum and morose as he was, people just give up and go away.”

Ellis Peters (1913–1995) British writer

Source: A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

“I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

“Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Source: The Christmas Sweater

Problem, Strong

“When I hear people talk about juggling, or the sacrifices they make for their children, I look at them like they're crazy, because 'sacrifice' infers that there was something better to do than being with your children.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Children

“Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Source: A Life of Erwin Schrödinger

“I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday

Life, Food, Sex

“I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove… that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

Art, Nature

“other people maay be there to help us, teach us, guide us aolng our path, But the lesson to be learned is always ours”

Melody Beattie (1948) American writer

Learning, Help

“Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.”

Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor

Source: The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

Pain, Courage, Change

“The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Thinking

“We have become a sloppy bunch of people. We say things we don’t mean. We make promises we don’t keep.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“How can we expect people to put value on our work when we don't value ourselves enough to set and hold uncomfortable boundaries?”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

“Seeing through glamour is easy. It's people that are hard.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary to Simon, pg. 341
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

“I hate when people say that they have something to tell you and they don't just say it.”

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

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Hate

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…

Life, Soul, Thinking, Change

“We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make -- and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Education

“In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars

Happiness

“Why do people want to talk to each other? I mean, what are the things people always want to find out about other people?”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

“Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.”

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

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)
Context: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Life, God, Mountain

“Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Life

“Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

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

“American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Secret

“I prefer to make up my own quotes and attribute them to very smart people, so that I can use them to win arguments”

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

Quotes

“Working really hard is what successful people do…”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Success

“People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

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

In a letter to Otto Juliusburger, September 29, 1942. Available in Einstein Archives 38-238
1940s
Variant: Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
Context: People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live... [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

Children

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer (1961)

Business

“That's the magic of books. They're never quite the same for any two people. When you read one, you automatically make it your own.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

Books, Reading

“People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.”

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

Books, Reading

“I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

Source: Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work

Art

“His eyes widened just a bit, his lips flexed. I realized he was trying not to laugh. I hate it when people find my threats amusing.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Laughing Corpse

Source: The Laughing Corpse

Hate

“people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Death, Sadness

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Happiness, Sadness, Idea, Time

“If the statue engulfs people in fire, we should send Leo.’
‘I love you too, man.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re immune. Or, heck, give me some of those nice water grenades and I’ll go. Ares and I have tangled before.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, Water

“At times she had thought that this was the only kind of connection you could have with people—intense, inexplicable and ultimately incomplete.”

Mary Gaitskill (1954) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: Bad Behavior

Time

“Stupid people go to college but"smart people own them"….”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Source: Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition

Stupidity

“I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours”

Jack Kerouac book Tristessa

Source: Tristessa

Life, Sadness, Memory, Winter

“Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Life, Time

“The heart wants what it wants, Dolp. You don't plan on making your life complicated, it just happens, and you don"t do it on purpose, and you don't do it to hurt people who love you. It just turns out that way sometimes.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Love, Life, Way, Heart

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

Love, Way, Bird

“There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Gadiantons and the Silver Sword

World

“Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.”

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

Quotes about people page 82

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Quotes about people
page 82