Quotes about personality (10000 quotes, page 3)

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Childhood , Forgetting , Pain , World

“Rejection doesn't mean that you aren't good enough…
it just means the other person failed to realize what you have to offer.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“And now - this is the most important thing. We will not give up anything. And we will fight for every meter of our land, for every person.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

2022, "We will not give up anything. And we will fight for every meter of our land" (30 March 2022)

Fight

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

Catherine Ponder (1927) American priest

Relationship , Way , Forgiveness

“Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.”

Tove Jansson book The Summer Book

Source: The Summer Book

Memory

“Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Bend Sinister

Source: Bend Sinister

Birth

“His answer to every problem, every setback was “I will work harder!” —which he had adopted as his personal motto.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Problem

“Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Life , Death

“I love being married, I do. It's so great to find that one special person that you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”

Rita Rudner (1953) American comedian

Best of the Improv, Vol. 3 (2003)

Anniversary , For Him , Love , Life

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

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

Source: nothing personal

Love , Life , Death , God

“A person's a person, no matter how small.”

Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who!

Source: Horton Hears a Who! (1954)

“I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Bruce Lee — Wisdom for the Way

Time

“Life can be cruel. It´s been my struggle, my personal battle, my obsession to make people see that different isn´t always bad.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx

Life , People

“The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Source: The Art of Money Getting: Golden Rules for Making Money

Life , Health , Success , Happiness

“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”

Stefan Zweig book The World of Yesterday

Source: The World of Yesterday

Life , War , Peace , Light

“If you love without evoking love in return - if through the vital expression of yourself as a loving person you fail to become a loved person, then your love is impotent, it is a misfortune.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Love

“If we do not know how to take care of ourselves and to love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. Loving oneself is the foundation for loving another person.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: 365 days of practical, powerful teachings from the beloved Zen teacher

Love , People

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Bruce Lee radio interview with Ted Thomas
Bruce Lee
Context: When I look around, I always learn something: to be always yourself, and to express yourself, to have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Context: When I look around I always learn something, and that is to be yourself always, express yourself, and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate him. Now that seems to be the prevalent thing happening in Hong Kong, like they always copy mannerism, but they never start from the root of his being and that is, how can I be me?

Faith

“That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Love

“If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Fear , Understanding , Change

“i think thats one of the problems with the world today, nobody knows who they are. everyone is running around looking for an identity, or trying to borrow one, only they dont know it. they actually think they know who they are and hat they are? theyre just a bunch of schleppers… who have no idea what a search for personal truth and identity really is, which would be alright if they didn't get in your way, but they insist that they know everything and that if you dont live their way then youre not living properly and they want to take your space away… they actually want to somehow get into your space and live in it and change it or destroy it… they just cant believe that you know what you are doing and that you are happy and content with it. you see thats the problem right there. if they could see that then they wouldnt have to feel threatened and feel that they have to destroy you before you destroy them. they just cant get it through their philistine heads that you are happy where you are and dont want to have anything to do with them. my space is mine and thats enough for me.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Truth , World , Way , Feeling

“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up with some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.

Love , Forgiveness , Evil , Hurt

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Missing You , World

“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”

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

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

For women , Love , Search , Learning

“To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

Source: The One by Whom Scandal Comes

Imagination

“Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams, and personality.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: Waiting and Dating

Dreams , Motivation

“We have seen many rich persons, many powerful persons, many famous persons, many beautiful persons, many learned and scholarly persons, and persons in the renounced order of life unattached to material possessions. But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simultaneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like Kṛṣṇa, in the history of humanity. Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is a historical person who appeared on this earth 5,000 years ago. He stayed on this earth for 125 years and played exactly like a human being, but His activities were unparalleled. From the very moment of His appearance to the moment of His disappearance, every one of His activities is unparalleled in the history of the world, and therefore anyone who knows what we mean by Godhead will accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one is equal to the Godhead, and no one is greater than Him. That is the import of the familiar saying “God is great.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Source: Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Life , God , World , Beauty

“being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

Source: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

Sad , Wise , Deep , Depressing

“I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes -- it's about all kinds of change”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Fashion , Change , Clothes

“Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Love

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

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

Thinking , Reading

“I've found that the way a person feels about cats-and the way they feel about him or her in return-is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person's character”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Way , Feeling , Cats , Gauge

“A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.”

Karen Horney (1885–1952) American-German psychoanalyst

“Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1109a.27.
Variant translation: Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
Nicomachean Ethics

Money , Way , Motivation , Time

“Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.”

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

love , Happy , Relationship , Cute

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Love , Forgetting

“Don't take it personally. Just take it seriously.”

Gordon Ramsay (1966) British chef, writer and TV presenter

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Funny

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Singing , Sea , Forgetting

“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Education , Law , Universe

“It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.”

Colin Firth (1960) English actor

Help

“Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Hate , Nature

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Life , People , Strong

“For three months,
a person sits and looks at you,
imagining a kiss.”

Etgar Keret (1967) Israeli and polish writer and screenwriter

Imagination , Kiss

“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw" in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "Uncut" edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: "Dr. Harshaw says that 'the word "love" designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.'"
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

love , Wise , Happy , Relationship

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Letter to three students (October 1967) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz (1970) “The Struggle Intensifies".

Justice

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything

People

“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

Time

“But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Context: This, then, is how one must imagine the punitive city. At the crossroads, in the gardens, at the side of roads being repaired or bridges built, in workshops open to all, in the depths of mines that may be visited, will be hundreds of tiny theatres of punishment. Each crime will have its law; each criminal his punishment. It will be a visible punishment, a punishment that tells all, that explains, justifies itself, convicts: placards, different-coloured caps bearing inscriptions, posters, symbols, texts read or printed, tirelessly repeat the code. Scenery, perspectives, optical effects, trompe-l’œil sometimes magnify the scene, making it more fearful than it is, but also clearer. From where the public is sitting, it is possible to believe in the existence of certain cruelties which, in fact, do not take place. But the essential point, in all these real or magnified severities, is that they should all, according to a strict economy, teach a lesson: that each punishment should be a fable. And that, in counterpoint with all the direct examples of virtue, one may at each moment encounter, as a living spectacle, the misfortunes of vice. Around each of these moral ‘representations’, schoolchildren will gather with their masters and adults will learn what lessons to teach their offspring. The great terrifying ritual of the public execution gives way, day after day, street after street, to this serious theatre, with its multifarious and persuasive scenes. And popular memory will reproduce in rumour the austere discourse of the law. But perhaps it will be necessary, above these innumerable spectacles and narratives, to place the major sign of punishment for the most terrible of crimes: the keystone of the penal edifice.

“… you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of. For a person you've takenfrom us no longer in your power. He's free all over again.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Source: The First Circle

People , Strong

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Pain , Feeling , Thinking

“You said you're going far away," Tamaru said. "How far away are we talking about?"

"It's a distance that can't be measured."

"Like the distance that separates one person's heart from another's.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Heart

“Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who has never achieved much.”

Joan Collins (1933) English actress, author and columnist

Deep

“The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Thinking

“It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

People , Lie

“There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Source: The Goat-Foot God

Life , Time

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Feeling , Reality , Sense , Freedom

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

God , Pleasure , Thinking

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84 (2009-2010)

Hope , Love , Life , Heart

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

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

As reported in Einstein — A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, when asked about a clipping from a magazine article reporting his comments on Christianity as taken down by Viereck, Einstein carefully read the clipping and replied, "That is what I believe." .
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life , Feeling , Reading

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Sad , Heartbreaking , Hurtful , Relationship

“Oh, I'm crazy all right. I do have plenty of psychoses. Multiple personality, delusional dementia, OCD. I've got them all, but most of all, I'm crazy about you.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

“I'm not basically a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Joy , Happiness

“Sex is more than an act of pleasure, it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Pleasure , Sex , Feeling , Parting

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Failure , Thinking , Learning , Success

“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

Source: A New Earth

Universe , Parting

“Love can be a terrible curse, Eragon. It can make you overlook even the largest flaws in a person's behavior.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Love , Behavior

“You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Life , People , World , Past

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Out of Solitude

For Friend , Pain , Reality , Despair

“He is a great person, as well as a great musician. And this guy sings like he was born down below Mississippi!”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

B.B. King http://www1.gitarrebass.de/magazine/0008/top10.htm
About

Guy , Singing

“There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 104

Life , Success

“…racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate in man. It is the product of ideologies. But even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed, it would not render social cooperation futile and would not invalidate Ricardo's theory of association. Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.”

Ludwig von Mises book Human Action

Part 2, VIII.84
Human Action (1949)

Love , Men , People , Peace

“That's what I like about the World Series. It gives me a chance to talk with lots of writers, a chance for them to understand me better than in the past. When Roberto Clemente is mentioned, he is always mentioned with injuries. They say I'm moody, selfish, temperamental. That's not the real me. I was born with a serious face. If you know my life, if you know me well by taking the time to learn to know me, then you'll understand me. Most places I go, people say "smile." I don't like that. I don't believe in being a hypocrite. If the occasion is for smiling, I will be smiling. I'm a very happy person.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Says He is Very Happy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=42oeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1983%2C4221206 by the Associated Press, in The Daytona Beach Morning Journal (October 16, 1971), p. 1-C
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Life , People , World , Smile

“Esaias says: “The wolf also shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall take his rest with the kid; the calf also, and the bull, and the lion shall eat together; and a little boy shall lead them. …” I am quite aware that some persons endeavour to refer these words to the case of savage men, both of different nations and various habits, who come to believe, and when they have believed, act in harmony with the righteous. But although this is [true] now with regard to some men coming from various nations to the harmony of the faith, nevertheless in the resurrection of the just [the words shall also apply] to those animals mentioned. For God is rich in all things. And it is right that when the creation is restored, all the animals should … revert to the food originally given by God … that is, the productions of the earth.”

Irenaeus (130–202) Bishop and saint

Book 5, Chapter 33, Section 4. Translated by Philip Schaff et al. (full text at Wikisource).
Against Heresies

Men , God , Faith , Food

“Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research -- neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

On Becoming a Person (1961)
Source: page 23-24

God , Truth , Way , Error

“All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Of Sir Richard Jebb, Some Cambridge Dons of the Nineties (1956)
1950s

Time

“The Zulu king [Zwelithini] must stop these threats of violence. We are not scared. I am scared of no one. No amount of violence can scare me because some of us are surprised that we are still alive today. … We want every Zulu-speaking person to get a piece of land. If the king wants to give land through the Ingonyama Trust, he must convince the EFF and the government.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 8 March 2018, concerning the Ingonyama Trust which administers 2.8-million hectares of land on behalf of the king, who is its sole trustee, https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-03-01-kzn-premier-backs-zulu-king-on-land-debate/ as quoted by Eric Naki in Juju lays into Zulu King Zwelithini https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1850043/juju-lays-into-zulu-king-zwelithini/, The Citizen (8 March 2018). See also: Malema takes aim at Zulu king over land: 'There are no holy cows' https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-03-09-malema-takes-aim-at-zulu-king/, TimesLive (9 March 2018)

“I know my fans look up to me and that's why I make my songs so personal; it's all about things I've experienced and things I like or hate. I write for myself and hope that my fans like what I have to say.”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"Avril Lavigne Over the Hedge Interview" https://www.girl.com.au/avril-lavigne-over-the-hedge-interview.htm by Gaynor Flynn, in Girl.com.au (July 2006)

Hate , Hope

“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Address at his enthronement as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town (7 September 1986)

“If a person abandons his prayer such that he neither desires its rewards nor fears its chastisement, for such a person I do not care if he dies a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 202
Shi'ite Hadith

Fear

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

in Spain
As quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.

People , Animals , Wealth

“It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”… The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 74-75

Way , Nature , Tree , Christ

“To be integrated in one another, each person should annul himself before the others. This is done by each seeing the friends' merits and not their faults. But one who thinks that he is a little higher than the friends can no longer unite with them.”

Baruch Ashlag (1907–1991) Polish rabbi

Selected Articles

Thinking

“Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy.”

George Ohsawa (1893–1966) twentieth century Japanese philosopher

Source: Essential Ohsawa - From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom - Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics (1994), p. 77

“To tell the story of how and why we chose to do what we did, no one can ignore the personalities and characteristics of those individuals engaged in making decisions. For military command is as much a practice of human relations as it is a science of tactics and a knowledge of logistics. Where there are people, there is pride and ambition, prejudice and conflict. In generals, as in all other men, capabilities cannot always obscure weaknesses, nor can talents hide faults.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. x.

Men , People , Knowledge , Decision

“Mother Mary, like us, was born in sin of sinful parents, but the Holy Spirit covered her, sanctified and purified her so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood. The Holy Spirit permitted the Virgin Mary to remain a true, natural human being of flesh and blood, just as we. However, he warded off sin from her flesh and blood so that she became the mother of a pure child, not poisoned by sin as we are. For in that moment when she conceived, she was a holy mother filled with the Holy Spirit and her fruit is a holy pure fruit, at once God and truly man, in one person”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker; republished as Sermons of Martin Luther (1996), p. 291

God , Nature , Parent

“They’re like leeches. I’m so tired of it. They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

November 2005 reported by report by NY Post https://nypost.com/2005/11/23/jerko-jackos-ugly-jabs-at-jews-calls-them-leeches-on-tape/

Money , World , Cars , Housing

“I'm deeply saddened by a sense that whites are still superior in this country, in some sense, that if you sit at a restaurant, they're served before a Kenyan is served. If you go through customs, a white person is going to follow orders that "all people are to be treated the same."”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

..
Said during a visit to Kenya in the late 1980s or early 1990s, recorded in the 20-minute documentary "A Journey In Black And White" by WeSearchr, as reported and quoted in "Documentary Of Young Obama’s Visit To Kenya Is Set To Be Released" http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/19/documentary-of-young-obamas-visit-to-kenya-is-set-to-be-released/ by Alex Pfeiffer, The Daily Caller (19 September 2016)
1980s

People , Sense , Country

“Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (28 January 1944)<sup> http://www.telelib.com/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440128.html</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)

“I've become a free-for-all brand. I hope they come out with a rule that they can't use a person's name without paying him for it!”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi

Hope

“The kind of mathematics foisted on children in schools is not meaningful, fun, or even very useful. This does not mean that an individual child cannot turn it into a valuable and enjoyable personal game. For some the game is scoring grades; for others it is outwitting the teacher and the system. For many, school math is enjoyable in its repetitiveness, precisely because it is so mindless and dissociated that it provides a shelter from having to think about what is going on in the classroom. But all this proves is the ingenuity of children. It is not a justifications for school math to say that despite its intrinsic dullness, inventive children can find excitement and meaning in it.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

Children , School , Game , Mathematics

“Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to obtain righteousness. … The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner. Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 73-74

God , Faith

“It has been my personal experience that the true flavour, the real fun, the continuous excitement of work lie in the process of doing it rather than in having it over and done with.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 135.

Lie

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love , Life , Feeling , Mountain

“Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

“Miscellaneous Observations,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #48

Education , Childhood

Quotes about personality page 3

Quotes about personality
page 3