Quotes about personality
page 85

Vilhelm Ekelund photo
G. E. Moore photo
Kelly Osbourne photo

“With parents like heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and entertainment impresario/personality Sharon Osbourne, you might have anger management issues, too.”

Kelly Osbourne (1984) English singer-songwriter, actress, television presenter and fashion designer

Baltimore Jewish Times, Jan 30 2009 http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/celebrities/jt/celebrities/kelly_osbourne/
About

Amir Taheri photo

“As some of us noted before Saddam Hussein’s 2003 fall, banning the Ba’ath as such was a mistake – for, in a sense, the Ba’ath had also been a victim of Saddam’s savage rule. The Ba’ath, modeled on European fascist parties, was never a democratic movement. Yet, before Saddam turned it into an empty shell to be filled with his personality cult, it had been a genuine political movement, representing a significant segment of Iraqi opinion. It had started as a predominantly Shiite party seeking to downplay sectarianism by promoting pan-Arab ideas. Saddam turned it into a sectarian party, first dominated by the Arab Sunni minority and eventually by his Tikriti clan. The wisest course would’ve been to let those Ba’athists who had been purged, imprisoned and exiled under Saddam to reclaim their party and rebuild it with full respect for Iraq’s new democratic and pluralist political system. Those Ba’athists who committed crimes were known to all and could’ve been blacklisted and tried as individuals. The blanket ban suddenly transformed some 1.4 million civil servants, including tens of thousands of teachers and medical doctors and some half a million military personnel, into pariahs simply because they’d been nominal Ba’ath members. Yet most had joined simply to protect their careers under a brutal regime.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Iraq: Reconciling with the Ba'ath" http://nypost.com/2008/01/16/iraq-reconciling-with-the-baath/, New York Post (January 16, 2008).
New York Post

Edgar Degas photo
William James photo

“I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.”

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

Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

Anton Chekhov photo
Lewis Pugh photo

“I’ve swum through some very cold and rough seas. I think that’s made me more determined than the average person.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Louis Brandeis photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Francisco De Goya photo

“Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons.”

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

the announcement in the paper of 6. Feb. 1799 was necessary because Goya was unable to find regular bookshops to sell the Capricho-prints. That year 300 sets were printed, which meant 24.000 prints!! - without the mis-prints and proof-prints.
The Caprichos was the name of a serie of eigthy prints that Goya entitled 'Los Caprichos'; Goya made them in a combination of regular etching & aquatint technique. Etching gave lines by scratching with needles in the copper-plate. Aquatint gave fields of flat watercolor wash, a uniform tone composed of tiny grains and speckles rather than lines (as Robert Hughes explains) in the same book, p. 176-177/207-208)
1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Thorstein Veblen photo
Hope Solo photo

“It’s been a crazy year, as always — the story of my life — but it’s been a great year. Right now, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my personal life. I’m happily married. Yeah, there’s lots of ups and downs, but that’s what makes us strong is getting through them all.”

Hope Solo (1981) American association football player

As quoted in "Hope Solo: 'I'm the happiest I’ve ever been in my personal life. I'm happily married'" http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/sounders/hope-solo-im-the-happiest-ive-ever-been-in-my-personal-life-im-happily-married/, Seattle Times (January 24, 2013)
2010s

Newt Gingrich photo

“I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Interview with WASHINGTON POST, January 3, 1985.
1980s

John Banville photo
Gautama Buddha photo
Bill Hybels photo
Joe Biden photo

“I would respectfully suggest to you that the Democrats out there understand I am the only person with a plan that can get out of Iraq without our interests in the region not falling apart.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Conference call https://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/31/cq_2212.html?pagewanted=all with reporters after announcing candidacy for the 2008 Democratic president nomination (January 30, 2007)
2000s

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
A. P. Herbert photo

“A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.”

"Is 'Highbrow' Libellous?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Alexander H. Stephens photo
Colin Wilson photo
Milton Bradley (baseball) photo

“I want people to say Milton Bradley was a pretty good ballplayer and a pretty good person. Anybody who is going to stand between me getting there, then they need to be eliminated.”

Milton Bradley (baseball) (1978) Major League Baseball player

They Said It: Milton Bradley, Sports Illustrated, Adam Duerson, September 5, 2005, 2009-01-04 http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1112652/index.htm,

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Gore Vidal photo

“You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On American Altruism http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=338
2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

Andrew Sega photo
Dana Rohrabacher photo

“The American people, through the 35 states that have liberalized laws banning either medical marijuana, marijuana in general, or cannabinoid oils, have made it clear that federal enforcers should stay out of their personal lives. It’s time for restraint of the federal government’s over-aggressive weed warriors.”

Dana Rohrabacher (1947) American politician

"O.C. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher trying again with bill protecting state marijuana laws", The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rohrabacher-659189-laws-state.html (April 23, 2015)

Muhammad photo

“A person who circumambulates this House (the Ka’bah) seven times and performs the two Rak’at Salat (of Tawaaf) in the best form possible will have his sins forgiven.”

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

Biharul Anwar, Volume 96, Page 49
Shi'ite Hadith

Joseph Joubert photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Anton Chekhov photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

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

Other

Jane Roberts photo
William Makepeace Thackeray photo

“Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Sorrows of Werther, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Stanislav Grof photo
Clarence Thomas photo

“After Magna Carta became subject to renewed interest in the 17th century, William Blackstone referred to this provision as protecting the 'absolute rights of every Englishman'. And he formulated those absolute rights as 'the right of personal security', which included the right to life; 'the right of personal liberty'; and 'the right of private property'. He defined 'the right of personal liberty' as 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. The Framers drew heavily upon Blackstone's formulation, adopting provisions in early State Constitutions that replicated Magna Carta's language, but were modified to refer specifically to 'life, liberty, or property'. State decisions interpreting these provisions between the founding and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment almost uniformly construed the word 'liberty' to refer only to freedom from physical restraint. Even one case that has been identified as a possible exception to that view merely used broad language about liberty in the context of a habeas corpus proceeding—a proceeding classically associated with obtaining freedom from physical restraint.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Paul Keating photo

“This is a low-flying person.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring yet again to former Treasurer Peter Costello, 7.30 Report, August 6, 2008. 7.30 Report Interview http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2326431.htm

Ervin László photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Bob Woodward photo
Randal Marlin photo

“If you can show that something is to a person's advantage, they have an attractive reason for doing that thing.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Four, Ethics And Propaganda, p. 140

Sania Mirza photo
Enoch Powell photo

“It's not impossible but it's difficult, for a non-white person to be British.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

As quoted in Iain Macleod https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780091785673 (Hutchinson, 1994), by Robert Shepherd, p. 366
1990s

Katherine Harris photo

“I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful…You know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph.”

Katherine Harris (1957) U.S. politician

On Sean Hannity's talk radio program, August 1, 2005, responding to Hannity asking Harris whether the jokes bothered her.

Huey P. Newton photo

“Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something he does not have.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements (April 15, 1970)
To Die For The People

Jimmy Carter photo
Enoch Powell photo

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.

The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace'. The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.

Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), pp. 487-488.
1970s

William Herschel photo

“Here [in Slough], soon after my arrival, I began to lay the foundation upon which by degrees the whole structure was raised as it now stands, and the speculum being highly polished and put into the tube, I had the first view through it on February 19, 1787. …the first speculum, by a mismanagement of the person who cast it, came out thinner on the centre of the back than was intended, and on account of its weakness would not permit a good figure to be given to it. …A second mirror was cast January 26, 1788, but it cracked in cooling. February 16 we recast it, and it proved to be of a proper degree of strength. October 24 it was brought to a pretty good figure and polish, and I observed the planet Saturn with it. But not being satisfied, I continued to work upon it till August 27, 1789, when it was tried upon the fixed stars, and I found it to give a pretty sharp image. Large stars were a little affected with scattered light, owing to many remaining scratches on the mirror. August the 28th, 1789, having brought the telescope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet, and also saw the spots upon Saturn better than I had ever seen them before, so that I may date the finishing of the forty-foot telescope from that time.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works".

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
André Maurois photo
FM-2030 photo

“I am a 21st Century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future.”

FM-2030 (1930–2000) author, teacher, transhumanist philosopher, futurist and consultant

"Transhuman FM-2030" http://www.transhuman.org/transhumanfm-2030.htm, transhuman.org

Carl Sagan photo
A. J. Muste photo
William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Julia Serano photo

“Once a person acknowledges that they possess some form of privilege, they are more likely to accept the reality that they are not in any way objective about the form of marginalization in question”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Theodore L. Cuyler photo

“A genuine revival means a trimming of personal lamps.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 521.

Frances Kellor photo
Kunti photo
Philip Kapleau photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
Willem de Kooning photo

“And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp — for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to — a movement for each person and open for everybody.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

1990's & from posthumous publications
Source: Quoted in A Brief History of American Culture (1996) by Robert M. Crunden, p. 279.

Richard Rodríguez photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“[…]a person stops searching for information and knowledge of one’s self, ignorance sets in.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

“The public takes care of their fear by thinking only crazies and stupid people wind up in cults. I've interviewed over 4000 ex-cult members. There's no one type of person who is vulnerable.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1997, as cited in Margaret Thaler Singer http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-4232879_ITM, The Lancet, January 31, 2004
2004

Alastair Reynolds photo

“It is not possible for one person to meet all of another's needs and marriage partners who expect this soon find each other wanting.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo

“Great results in science and engineering are "bunched" in the same person too often for success to be a matter of random luck.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“Above anything else, stay true to yourself. Whether that means for you that you like to have blue hair, or you don't like to drink, or you are attracted to the same sex, or you want to remove yourself from Facebook, or you've got 3 different kids from 3 different dads but you know you're a really good mom, or you cry for a week because your turtle died. Whatever your truth is, stay true to yourself. But be a good person while you're at it.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked what advice would she give young feminist — Reddit "Sunday morning with Gillian Anderson. Grab a cup of coffee and A Vision of Fire. AMA." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2j12o1/sunday_morning_with_gillian_anderson_grab_a_cup#cl7c2ps (October 12, 2014)
2010s

“After that, I was on the right track to the city centre, where there was enough light to distinguish people from letter boxes. The letter boxes, in my perhaps embittered view, had warmer personalities than the people.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, May Week Was in June (1990), p. 15

Judith Martin photo
Rollo May photo
Colin Wilson photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo

“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.
Attributed from posthumous publications

Bill O'Neill photo
Leona Lewis photo
John Rogers Searle photo
Mona Charen photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Douglas MacArthur photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 489.

Bolesław Prus photo
Ferdinand Marcos photo