“Clichés so often befall vain people.”

“It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

“Freedom and democracy,
That's the word from Washington every day.
Put America to sleep with warm milk and clichés,
And people are expendable along the way.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

“People are often so busy living that they never stop to wonder why.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“I often carry things to read
so that I will not have to look at
the people.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

“Oblige people never so often, and, if you deny them on a single point, they remember nothing but that refusal.”
Quamlibet saepe obligati, si quid unum neges, hoc solum meminerunt quod negatum est.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their
lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.”

Carol Shields Unless

“In so far as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician