Quotes about personality
page 70

Harold W. Percival photo
Teresa of Ávila photo

“Never compare one person with another: comparisons are odious.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Maxim 44, p. 259
Maxims for Her Nuns (1963)

M. K. Hobson photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Ben Jonson photo

“It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Ivan Illich photo
M. K. Hobson photo
John Rupert Firth photo
Vladimir Horowitz photo
Joseph Massad photo
Ken Wilber photo

“Each will have his personal Rocket.”

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

“Personally I wish the police had truncheoned the English fans to death, but I can’t really say that on the record.”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

"Hopes fade for Tony Banks after holiday stroke" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1975281,00.html, The Times Online, 8 January 2006.
comment on football hooliganism abroad after allegations of police brutality against rioting English fans.

Seneca the Younger photo

“That most knowing of persons – gossip.”
Is qui scit plurimum, rumor.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Letter XLIII: On the relativity of fame, line 1.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLIII: On the relativity of fame

Courtney Love photo
Merrick Garland photo

“Well, of course I have great personal affection for the justice for whom I clerked, Justice Brennan.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Karen Horney photo
Lal Bahadur Shastri photo

“India will have to hang down her head in shame if even one person is left who is said in any way to be untouchable.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

“His interviewing self is, or was, an extra person, like the Holy Ghost, generated by self-contemplation.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"The Interview as Art" (1976), p. 208
Referring to W. H. Auden
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Pramod Muthalik photo

“Some of the parents of beaten up girls personally called me and thanked for saving their daughters as none of them till then knew about their kids’ habits.”

Pramod Muthalik (1963) Indian politician

Defending the 2009 Mangalore pub attack, as quoted in " Sex & drugs led to pub attack: Mutalik http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/Sex-drugs-led-to-pub-attack-Mutalik/articleshow/22222486.cms", Bangalore Mirror (6 February 2009)

Samuel Butler photo

“Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Genius, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Friedrich Engels photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Umberto Boccioni photo
Joseph Addison photo
Newton Lee photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Bill Clinton photo
Gao Xingjian photo

“Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.”

Source: Soul Mountain (1989), ch. 2, p. 15

Derek Parfit photo
Merrick Garland photo

“For a judge to be worthy of such trust, he or she must be faithful to the Constitution and to the statutes passed by the Congress. He or she must put aside his personal views or preferences, and follow the law -- not make it.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Remarks by the President Announcing Judge Merrick Garland as his Nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick, Garland, w:Merrick Garland, The White House, March 16, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_the_President_Announcing_Judge_Merrick_Garland_as_his_Nominee_to_the_Supreme_Court#Remarks_by_Judge_Garland]; quote then excerpted in:
USA Today, March 18, 2016, March 17, 2016, Obama: Merrick Garland qualified to serve on Supreme Court immediately, Gregory Korte http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/16/obama-supreme-court-nomination/81824982/,; and quote also excerpted in source:
CNN, March 16, 2016, March 18, 2016, Who is Merrick Garland?, Ariane De Vogue and Tami Luhby http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/16/politics/who-is-merrick-garland/index.html?eref=rss_politics,
Remarks by Judge Garland upon nomination to Supreme Court of the United States (2016)

Newton Lee photo

“Dictatorship of the majority over the minority would be an encroachment on the rights of the individual and their prerogative to personal freedom.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

Howard S. Becker photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
George W. Bush photo
Mary Baker Eddy photo
Bellamy Young photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Enver Hoxha photo
Immanuel Kant photo
Floyd Mayweather Jr. photo
Jane Roberts photo
Frank Deford photo
William Luther Pierce photo

“Killing, imprisoning or denying the rights of a human being is not injustice against one person; it enchains and kills a whole society.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Similar to Quran 5:32, as quoted in 1,000 Days in Prison: Narges Mohammadi Condemns Iranian Judiciary’s “Subservience” to Security Agencies https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2018/02/1000-days-in-prison-narges-mohammadi-condemns-iranian-judiciarys-subservience-to-security-agencies/ (February 21, 2018), Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Adi Da Samraj photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Walter Raleigh photo

“Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Anaïs Nin photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Lucille Ball photo
Nadine Gordimer photo
Lin Yutang photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

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

Letter to the Abbé Arnoux (19 July 1787) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0275
1780s

David Icke photo
Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Fernand Léger photo

“I myself have employed the close-up, which is the cinema's only real invention. The fragment of the object has also been of use to me; by isolating it you personalize it. All this work has led me to regard the phenomenon of objectivity as a new and highly contemporary value in itself”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

quote of c. 1927
Quote in 'Autour de Ballet Méchanique', as quoted in Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota; published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, pp. 21-22
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Elton Mayo photo

“What social and industrial research has not sufficiently realised as yet is that… minor irrationalities of the “average normal” person are cumulative in their effect. They may not cause “breakdown” in the individual but they do cause “breakdown” in the industry.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Elton Mayo, “Irrationalty and Revery”, Journal of Personnel Research, March 1933, p.482; Cited in: Ionescu, G.G., & A.L. Negrusa. "Elton Mayo, an Enthusiastical Managerial Philosopher." Revista de Management Comparat International 14.5 (2013): 671.

Vladimir Lenin photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
William Hazlitt photo
Gerald Ford photo

“I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

On the Nixon tapes, in a speech to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as quoted in The New York Times (4 May 1974)
1970s

Derren Brown photo

“In Victorian criminology there was an enthusiasm for spotting criminal tendencies in a person’s features.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Richard Feynman photo

“Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

statement (c. 1965), quoted in " An irreverent best-seller by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman gives nerds a good name http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20091337,00.html", People Magazine (22 July 1985)

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Iain Banks photo
Iain Banks photo

“How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.”

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 11 “Regarding Gravious” section X (p. 372).

Rachel Maddow photo

“When Pat is saying something outrageous, you know when you yell at the TV? I get to yell at him in person. I get to yell at the TV and it hears me.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

"A liberal pundit soars to a prominent perch," Boston Globe (September 8, 2008)

Everett Dean Martin photo
Mario Savio photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Albert Einstein photo
Chetan Bhagat photo
Samuel Adams photo
Homér photo

“Hardship can age a person overnight.”

XIX. 360 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

David Lloyd George photo

“A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in The British System of Government (1965) by Dilwyn Thomas
Undated

Jane Roberts photo
Louis C.K. photo

“How many advantages can one person have? I'm a white man!”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Chewed Up

“The messages of the prophets are essentially indictments of Israel for breach of covenant. They preserved some memory of the old traditions, but were not so naive as to think that the literal demands of the old law would be adequate in their own times. There is no condemnation of the stratification of society as such, rather a condemnation of the injustice and extortion which was done by the powerful. To take a specific example, the old law knew as security for a loan only the pledge (Exod. 22:26). In a simple economy, loans were evidently of an amount which would usually be adequately secured by giving to the creditor some property to hold until the loan was repaid. In case of default, the debtor's property simply reverted to the creditor. No other form of security is presupposed in the Covenant Code, and it is specifically forbidden that an Israelite be a "creditor" to one of his fellows. Already in the reign of Saul the situation had changed, Those who gathered about David as outlaws included those who had "creditors" (I Sam. 22:2), and who therefore had to flee. Under the old pledge system of security there would be no possible occasion for flight from the community in case of default. A totally different legal doctrine had come into practice whereby the person of the debtor was security for a loan. Upon default the creditor could seize him (or his family) as a slave, possibly without any legal action at all. The only alternative to slavery would have been flight. This doctrine is identical to that of Babylonian law, and no doubt of the Canaanites as well. It is in the law of the monarchy that Canaanite influence is doubtless to be posited, but it is a legal tradition in total contradiction to the customs and morality of early Israel. Amos protested violently against the way the legal doctrine was practiced, as did most of the prophets (Am. 2:6; Hos. 12:8-9; Mic. 2:1-2). The later lawcodes illustrate beautifully the way in which the early traditions, and the needs of business were brought into harmony. The older pledge system was simply inadequate for a commercial economy; and if the person of the debtor was to be protected, so also must the rights of the creditor to some security for his loan to be guaranteed. Therefore, Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code (Lv. 17-26) accept the doctrine of bodily liability, but place restrictions upon the powers of the creditor over the defaulting debtor. In the Holiness Code he is not to be treated as a slave, nor given the legal status of a slave, but rather to be as a hired laborer.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Law and Convenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1954)

Jesse Ventura photo
Paul Romer photo

“The question that I first asked was, why was progress... speeding up over time? It arises because of this special characteristic of an idea, which is if [a million people try] to discover something, if any one person finds it, everybody can use the idea.”

Paul Romer (1955) American economist

After learning that he was one of two recipients of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, as quoted in "Two Top U.S. Economists Win Nobel for Work on Growth and Climate: Research of William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer has had immense impact on global policy making, the Academy says" https://www.wsj.com/articles/nobel-in-economics-goes-to-american-pair-1538992672 The Wall Street Journal. October 8, 2018.

Mike Huckabee photo
Muhammad Ali (writer) photo

“Maulana Muhammad Ali wrote:… Some Mussulman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a… Gandhi-worshipper… Since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that he might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam… As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. And in this sense, the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussulman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character, even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself”

Muhammad Ali (writer) (1874–1951) Pakistani scholar and leading figure of the Ahmadiyya Movement

Gandhi’s reaction was: “In my humble opinion the Maulana has proved the purity of his heart and his faith in his own religion by expressing his view. He merely compared two sets of religious principles and gave his opinion as to which was better” (Navajivan, 13.4.1924).
(Young India, 10.4.1924). Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8