Quotes about personality
page 78

Martin Short photo
Judith Sheindlin photo

“I mean, did you think I was just a fake person here, that they picked out of, you know, that they picked out of a supermarket? Didn't you think that I had any legal experience at all, sir?”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Being cocky
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37tcUYWijiw

Joe Trohman photo
Larry Flynt photo
Francisco De Goya photo

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“What reason had he then for endeavouring, with such bitter hostility, to force me into the senate yesterday? Was I the only person who was absent? Have you not repeatedly had thinner houses than yesterday? Or was a matter of such importance under discussion, that it was desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus; on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate-house.”
Quid tandem erat causae, cur in senatum hesterno die tam acerbe cogerer? Solusne aberam, an non saepe minus frequentes fuistis, an ea res agebatur, ut etiam aegrotos deferri oporteret? Hannibal, credo, erat ad portas, aut de Pyrrhi pace agebatur, ad quam causam etiam Appium illum et caecum et senem delatum esse memoriae proditum est.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Philippica I; English translation by C. D. Yonge
Potentially the origin of the phrase "Hannibal ad portas" (Hannibal at the gates)
Philippicae – Philippics (44 BC)

Bert McCracken photo
Peter Akinola photo
Claude Adrien Helvétius photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Ernest Barnes photo
Samuel Butler photo

“Social thinking dilutes most personal power.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 64

Hillary Clinton photo

“We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Said to Charles Woods, the father of a Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi, as reported in "The Benghazi patsy" http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/the-benghazi-patsy-091101#ixzz3jrLiuxy0 by Rich Lowry, Politico (9 May 2013)
Attributed

Vanna Bonta photo
Tom Robbins photo
Hermann Hesse photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
Melanie Joy photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Francis Escudero photo
Bill Maher photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Morrissey photo
Ken Ham photo

“Since we don’t have a time machine, we can only make educated guesses about the looks, skills, and personality of each individual.… We took great care not to contradict biblical details.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

As quoted in My Encounter with Ken Ham's Giant Ark http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/july-web-only/ken-ham-ark-encounter-visit.html?start=1, Christian Post (July 22, 2016)

Albert Einstein photo

“May they not forget to keep pure the great heritage that puts them ahead of the West: the artistic configuration of life, the simplicity and modesty of personal needs, and the purity and serenity of the Japanese soul.”

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

Comment made after a six-week trip to Japan in November-December 1922, published in Kaizo 5, no. 1 (January 1923), 339. Einstein Archive 36-477.1. Appears in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 269
1920s

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam photo
Jimmy Wales photo

“Ideally, our rules should be formed in such a fashion that an ordinary helpful kind thoughtful person doesn't really even need to know the rules. You just get to work, do something fun, and nobody hassles you as long as you are being thoughtful and kind.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

User talk statement (7 April 2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ignore_all_rules/Archive_1#from_User_talk:Jimbo_Wales

Rahul Gandhi photo
Mona Sahlin photo

“If two equally qualified persons apply for a job at a workplace with few immigrants, the one called Mohammed should get the job.”

Mona Sahlin (1957) Swedish politician

Mona Sahlin in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, October 22, 2000.

Vitruvius photo
Hugo Weaving photo
Kenneth Arrow photo

“I was a very polite person, though. Paul Samuelson tells these stories how he used to correct his professors. I assume that’s true. But I wasn’t that type.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)
New millennium

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Alexander Graham Bell photo
Chuck Klosterman photo

“At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Recognizing Your Nemesis

Ingmar Bergman photo

“Winter Light — suppose we discuss that now?… The film is closely connected with a particular piece of music: Stravinski's A Psalm Symphony. I heard it on the radio one morning during Easter, and it struck me I'd like to make a film about a solitary church on the plains of Uppland. Someone goes into the church, locks himself in, goes up to the altar, and says: 'God, I'm staying here until in one way or another You've proved to me You exist. This is going to be the end either of You or of me!' Originally the film was to have been about the days and nights lived through by this solitary person in the locked church, getting hungrier and hungrier, thirstier and thirstier, more and more expectant, more and more filled with his own experiences, his visions, his dreams, mixing up dream and reality, while he's involved in this strange, shadowy wrestling match with God.
We were staying out on Toro, in the Stockholm archipelago. It was the first summer I'd had the sea all around me. I wandered about on the shore and went indoors and wrote, and went out again. The drama turned into something else; into something altogether tangible, something perfectly real, elementary and self-evident.
The film is based on something I'd actually experienced. Something a clergyman up in Dalarna told me: the story of the suicide, the fisherman Persson. One day the clergyman had tried to talk to him; the next, Persson had hanged himself. For the clergyman it was a personal catastrophe.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jonas Sima interview <!-- pages 173-174 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)

Jordan Peterson photo

“Partly what you need to do is decide what your highest value is. It's the star. What are you aiming for? You can decide. But there are some criteria. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, as well as for the larger community. It should cover the domain of life. There's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but within those constraints you have the choice. You have choice. The thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the load. And they think, 'well, I won't carry any load.' Ok, fine, but then you'll be like the slead dog that has nothing to pull. You'll get bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a wait. And that's not true for everyone. It's not true for conscientious people. For the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. This is why there's such an opiate epidemic among so many dispossessed white, middle aged, unemployed men in the U. S. They lose their job, and then they're done. They despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression. And the chronic pain is treated with opiates. That's what we're doing. And you should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. Rights, rights, rights, rights. Jesus. It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man. That's where the meaning in life is.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Anu Garg photo

“Scientifically speaking, an overweight person is more attractive than a skinny one. Newton's Law of Gravitation.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/wordsmithorg/posts/10157765608546840

Douglas MacArthur photo
Godfrey Bloom photo
Judith Krug photo

“You should have access to ideas and information regardless of your age. If anyone is going to limit or guide a young person, it should be the parent or guardian — and only the parent or guardian.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"A Library That Would Rather Block Than Offend" http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/011897library-florida.html by Pamela Mendels, The New York Times (January 18, 1997)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“Not all monotheisms are exactly the same, at the moment. They're all based on the same illusion, they're all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it's a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it's pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That's what it does globally, it's quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn't it? It says it's the Final Revelation. It says that God spoke to one illiterate businessman – in the Arabian Peninsula – three times through an archangel, and that the resulted material, which as you can see as you read it is largely plagiarized ineptly from the Old…and The New Testament, is to be accepted as the Final Revelation and as the final and unalterable one, and that those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims. Well I tell you what, I don't think Muhammad ever heard those voices. I don't believe it. And the likelihood that I am right – as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn't read, had bits of the Old and The New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct. But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I'd better listen because if I don't I'm in danger, or me who says "no, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it"? And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams – this is in London, this is in Toronto, this is in New York, it's right in our midst now – "Behead those who cartoon Islam". Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You're giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you why you do this. Make the best use of the time you've got left. This is really serious. … Look anywhere you like for the warrant for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for antisemitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that's on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque. And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force that is the main source of hatred, is also the main caller for censorship.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=youtu.be&t=16m36s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Jane Roberts photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Alfred Kinsey photo
Elbert Hubbard photo

“Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

"J.B. Runs Things," Short Stories and Index: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, Part 14 (1923) [Kessinger Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0766103978], p. 278.

John Gray photo
Tracey Ullman photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“My revenge is living well… I want to go get on a freighter and go through the Panama Canal. All I've ever wanted in my life is freedom and access. I like being backstage and watching the weird, human drama of all of these strange personalities that politics attracts.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Newton Lee photo
William Stubbs photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Letter to Rev. W. H. Channing (31 December 1843) quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 184.

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Newton Lee photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
Nusquam est qui ubique est. Vitam in peregrinatione exigentibus hoc evenit, ut multa hospitia habeant, nullas amicitias.

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

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter II: On discursiveness in reading, Line 2.

Jane Roberts photo
Steven M. Greer photo

“They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals. They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area… where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals… [I received this information from a source in SETI. ] This person, if I were to say who he is, almost every one your listeners would probably know the name.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

July 30, 2006
Greer on a Coast to Coast AM radio show that was hosted by Art Bell
2006
Source: [Vance, Ashlee, SETI urged to fess up over alien signals, The Register, July 31, 2006, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/31/signals_seti/, 2007-02-21]
Source: SETI & ET Signals, Coast to Coast AM, July 30, 2006, 2007-05-11 http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2006/07/30.html,

John Ruysbroeck photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Mario Cuomo photo

“The mugger who is arrested is back on the street before the police officer, but the person mugged may not be back on the street for a long time, if ever.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Calling for hiring of more police
The New Republic (4 April 1985)

“People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

As quoted in "Rumpole creator Mortimer dies at 85" by Sam Marsden and Chris Moncrieff, The Independent (16 January 2009)

Alan Keyes photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Ilana Mercer photo
W. H. Auden photo

“The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish.”

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 56–58

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Derryn Hinch photo

“Recently, I was evicted of contempt of court over my online editorial about (bleep). I was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine, or go to jail for 50 days. I believe this was the highest personal fine ever issued in Australia. Other websites, newspapers, and radio stations were not charged for similar or even more controversial material. Yet the judge attacked me for portraying myself as a scapegoat — a whipping boy — and he punished me accordingly. Now it is true, I have prior convictions. In 1987, I was fined $15,000 and jailed for exposing a paedophile priest Michael Glennon. Glennon had already been to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl, but was still running a camp for kids in country Victoria. And he was still a Catholic priest. He eventually went to jail, and he died behind bars several weeks ago. And to be honest, I feel good about that — he was an evil, evil man. I also spent five months under house arrest in 2011 for breaching court suppression orders, revealing the names of two serial sex offenders at a rally outside Victoria's Parliament House. About 4000 other people also shouted their names. That one cost me my radio job at 3AW. And I was fined and did 250 hours of community service for naming a judge who ruled that a man could not be charged for raping his wife under a 300-year-old British law. In Victoria, that law has since been changed. Now, here we go again. I have made a decision not taken lightly. On principle, I will not pay the $100,000 fine, which was due today. Instead, I'll go to jail. I'll go to jail for 50 days; to draw attention to all the suspended sentences for crimes of violence and child pornography; for the obscenely short sentences given to king hit killers; to draw attention to my campaign for a national register of convicted sex offenders. Already, 30,000 of you have signed up. I'm happy to serve just 50 days of the many years that the convicted paedophile ex-magistrate should be serving. That pervert, Simon Cooper, wasn't even put on the sex offenders register. If my going to jail draws attention to the judges and magistrates, out of touch with community expectations and your safety, then every one of my 50 days behind bars will be worth it. And so I'll go to jail.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 16 January 2014.

“The best critic of a translation is its second translation and nothing else. The person who translates a text should have something to say about that.”

Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet

Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Michelangelo Antonioni photo
KatieJane Garside photo

“That was such a perfect childhood. Up until recently I thought I saw too much too young. But now I feel truly lucky. It showed me how nice life could be and how it should be better for every person.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On spending her adolescent years on a sailboat, The Los Angeles Times http://articles.latimes.com/1992-11-07/entertainment/ca-1268_1_band-daisy-chainsaw (1992)

Ben Stein photo

“I'm still not that familiar with it [Intelligent Design]. I'm more familiar with it than most people, but nowhere near as familiar with it as a genuine expert in the subject. I don't pretend to be a scientist. I'm the person who moderates the discussion between and among the scientists.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

“Because I was involved in controversy, people saw me as controversial. Because the industry is about personalities, people thought Linn was about personalities.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

Interview with David Lander http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor. Stereophile, 30 November 2003.
2003

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Asger Jorn photo
Richard Koch photo
Jon Stewart photo

“This show is our own personal beliefs.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Paley Center interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpSw0j8-4_o&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=C889CCEBD1303E1D, in response to an audience question, "How do you keep your own personal beliefs from showing up in the show?"

Nelson Mandela photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo