Quotes about anyone
page 14

E.L. Doctorow photo
John McCain photo
Báb photo

“The acts of Him Whom God shall make manifest are like unto the sun, while the works of men, provided they conform to the good-pleasure of God, resemble the stars or the moon… Thus, should the followers of the Bayán observe the precepts of Him Whom God shall make manifest at the time of His appearance, and regard themselves and their own works as stars exposed to the light of the sun, then they will have gathered the fruits of their existence; otherwise the title of ‘starship’ will not apply to them. Rather it will apply to such as truly believe in Him, to those who pale into insignificance in the day-time and gleam forth with light in the night season.
Such indeed is the fruit of this precept, should anyone observe it on the Day of Resurrection. This is the essence of all learning and of all righteous deeds, should anyone but attain unto it. Had the peoples of the world fixed their gaze upon this principle, no Exponent of divine Revelation would ever have, at the inception of any Dispensation, regarded them as things of naught. However, the fact is that during the night season everyone perceiveth the light which he himself, according to his own capacity, giveth out, oblivious that at the break of day this light shall fade away and be reduced to utter nothingness before the dazzling splendour of the sun.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VIII, 1
The Persian Bayán

Malala Yousafzai photo
K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera photo
Amir Taheri photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Has anyone ever seen any Japanese begging? It's a race that has self-respect.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Talk at Clube Hebraica in Rio de Janeiro, on 3 April 2017. Bolsonaro: “Quilombola não serve nem para procriar” http://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/noticias/bolsonaro-quilombola-nao-serve-nem-para-procriar/. Congresso em Foco (5 April 2017).

Henri Lefebvre photo
James Harvey Robinson photo
Ryan Adams photo

“Note to self: don't change for anyone”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Note to Self: Don’t Die
29 (2005)

Richard J. Daley photo

“I have conferred with the superintendent of police this morning and I gave him instructions that an order be issued by him immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.”

Richard J. Daley (1902–1976) American politician

[David Farber, Chicago '68, University of Chicago Press, 1994, ISBN 0226238016, pg 145(b)</small>, pg 249<small>(a)]
Stated one week following the April 1968 Chicago riots to the people of Chicago because of his dissatisfaction with the minimum use of force employed by Police Superintendent James B. Conlisk in dealing with rioters.

Paris Hilton photo

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Christopher Hitchens photo
Richard Stallman photo

“I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

My Doom and You (2004) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html
2000s

Maurice de Vlaminck photo

“[how anyone could] remain an individual if he had to conform with senseless orders and old foolish things without being asked his opinion on them.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Quote of De Vlaminck c. 1898-99; as cited in Vlaminck, Klaus G. Perls, The Hyperion Press, New York 1941, p. 42
It was in these years in the military that Vlaminck was converted to anarchist thinking. In a writing then he questioned how anyone could..
Quotes dated

Leila Ben Ali photo
Maurice Allais photo

“Anyone who dares to speak about an aether is regarded as an ignorant and backward mind and he can only lose his credibility in scientific circles, although in reality those who criticize him use the same concept of intermediate medium in other words, whether it be fields, an associated fluid, a probability fluid, a pilot fluid, a quantum fluid, etc.”

Maurice Allais (1911–2010) French economist; 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

[Maurice Allais, L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience, Editions Clément Juglar, Paris, 1997, 506, 2-908735-09-1]

Chris Carrabba photo
George Hendrik Breitner photo

“I now have an abundance of models. Every woman I address on the street understands me pretty well. I never experienced anything like that, otherwise they always called me names. It is horrible that I don't have anyone [in Amsterdam] like you, because the only good I have heard about my works came from you. So visit me often.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb tegenwoordig een zee van modellen. Iedere vrouw die ik op straat aanspreek, vat het nogal goed op. Ik heb nog nooit zoo iets bijgewoond, anders schelden ze me altijd uit ‘t is toch naar dat ik niemand heb, eigenlijk zooals jij, want het enige goed dat ik gehoord heb, over mijn werken is van jou geweest. Kom dus maar dikwijls over.
quote of Breitner in a letter to his friend Herman van der Weele, Amsterdam, 14 June 1893, original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/54
1890 - 1900

Prem Rawat photo

“Ask yourself for a moment what is really important to you—not by anyone else's definition but your own.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Seattle, Washington (1994) as reported in Maharaji, Visions International (1998)
1990s

Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Madonna photo

“I've never really lived a conventional life, so I think it's quite foolish for me or anyone else to start thinking that I am going to start making conventional choices.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Misses "Certain Things" About Being Married, OK!, 2012-01-12 http://www.okmagazine.com/news/madonna-misses-certain-things-about-being-married,

Charles M. Blow photo
Neal Stephenson photo
João Magueijo photo

“I've always felt that copious use of the word 'something' allows anyone to solve any problem, even insoluble ones.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 107
Faster than the Speed of Light

Pope Alexander VI photo

“The Duke (Cesare) is a good-natured man, but he cannot tolerate affronts. I have often told him that Rome is a free city, and that everyone may write and speak as he pleases. Evil is even spoken of me, but I let it pass." The Duke replied: "Rome is accustomed to write and speak; it is well, but I will teach such people repentance."* The Pope finally reminded him how much he himself had forgiven, and especially at the time of Charles VIII's invasion, so many cardinals, whom the King himself had called his betrayers. "I could," he said, "have sentenced the Vice-Chancellor and Cardinal Vincula to death, but I did not wish to harm anyone, and I have forgiven fourteen great nobles.”

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) pope of the Catholic Church 1492-1503

Report of the Ferrarese ambassador, Beltrando Costabili to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, February 1, 1502. Archives of Modena: As quoted in History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1900), Ferdinand Gregorovius, George Bell & Sons, London, Volume 7, Part 2 (1497-1503), p. 486. http://books.google.com/books?id=kW1OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA486&dq=%22often+told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PQRlUeiiBIPA9QT4s4H4CA&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22often%20told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false See also L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol.6, p. 12. http://books.google.com/books?id=hk1DAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ojZlUeS7Dob49QTTn4HQBw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false. (Commonweal writes: “Whatever his faults, the Pope appears to have been of a forgiving and clement disposition, pardoning foes when he had them in his power, and becoming reconciled with those who had bitterly opposed him. With Savonarola — pulpit methods, by the way, were scarcely as novel and extraordinary then as our author (Peter de Roo) thinks — Alexander VI dealt on the whole rather patiently, more so, indeed, than our author, who is hardly fair to the friar.” -- Commonweal (1924), Commonweal Publishing Company, volume 1, p. 185. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition&btnG=#hl=en&tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&oq=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&gs_l=serp.3...1287.1287.1.1562.1.1.0.0.0.0.79.79.1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.8.psy-ab.VnzmdIrn1SQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44990110,d.eWU&fp=5b7686e7449457e7&biw=1294&bih=770)

Dan Rather photo
Frederick Forsyth photo
Prem Rawat photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“A strange people, for whom it is out of the question that anyone can be moral without reading the Bible, and strong without playing cricket, and a gentleman without being English! And it is this that makes them so detested. They never fuse, they never lose their Englishness.”

Estranha gente, para quem é fora de dúvida que ninguém pode ser moral sem ler a Bíblia, ser forte sem jogar o críquete e ser gentleman sem ser inglês! E é isto que os torna detestados. Nunca se fundem, nunca se desinglesam.
"Os Ingleses no Egipto"; "The English in Egypt" pp. 159-60.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Jesper Kyd photo

“I only composed and experimented for myself and not to please anyone else.”

Jesper Kyd (1972) musician

Amiga Music Preservation interview, 2006

Gloria Estefan photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo
Colum McCann photo
Otto Skorzeny photo

“Although care must be taken not to kill or injure anyone while these persons are being taken into custody, resistance must be broken!”

Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975) Austrian SS-Standartenführer (colonel) in the German Waffen-SS

Quoted in The Race for Rome (1975) by Dan Kurzman.

Ray Comfort photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to-date. I lived in a chronic apprehension lest I might, so to speak, miss the last bus, and so find myself stranded and benighted, in a desert of demodedness, while others, more nimble than myself, had already climbed on board, taken their tickets and set out toward those bright but, alas, ever receding goals of Modernity and Sophistication. Now, however, I have grown shameless, I have lost my fears. I can watch unmoved the departure of the last social-cultural bus—the innumerable last buses, which are starting at every instant in all the world’s capitals. I make no effort to board them, and when the noise of each departure has died down, “Thank goodness!” is what I say to myself in the solitude. I find nowadays that I simply don’t want to be up-to-date. I have lost all desire to see and do the things, the seeing and doing of which entitle a man to regard himself as superiorly knowing, sophisticated, unprovincial; I have lost all desire to frequent the places and people that a man simply must frequent, if he is not to be regarded as a poor creature hopelessly out of the swim. “Be up-to-date!” is the categorical imperative of those who scramble for the last bus. But it is an imperative whose cogency I refuse to admit. When it is a question of doing something which I regard as a duty I am as ready as anyone else to put up with discomfort. But being up-to-date and in the swim has ceased, so far as I am concerned, to be a duty. Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else’s categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called “life” which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to “see”; I keep out of range of the “art” they think is so vitally necessary to “keep up with”; I flee from those “good times” in the “having” of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Silence is Golden,” p. 55
Do What You Will (1928)

Tom Cruise photo
Andrew S. Grove photo

“Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment worth $2,000, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

1980s - 1990s
Source: Computer Decisions Vol. 16 (1984). p. 126

Max Schmeling photo

“Joe Louis is the hardest puncher that I've ever seen… He's a good man. Anyone who plans on beating him had better know what they're doing.”

Max Schmeling (1905–2005) German boxer

Describing Joe's punching power. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fight/peopleevents/p_louis.html

Philip K. Dick photo
Mark Ames photo
Anish Kapoor photo
Ray Comfort photo
Jared Fogle photo

“I had no intention of anyone ever finding out what I had done.”

Jared Fogle (1977) American corporate mascot

On the success of his Subway diet, as quoted in "Subway pitchman Jared lost pounds, then anonymity" by Mitch Stacy in Associated Press report (16 November 2003)

Ann Coulter photo
Emo Philips photo

“Shaw said that three years as a theatre critic was the maximum before insanity set in - the implication being that anyone who lasted longer than that was too dull to be unbalanced by his nightly ordeal.”

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

'Introduction'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

Phil Hartman photo
Robert Frost photo
Joel Bakan photo

“These are the elements of an emerging order that may prove to be as dangerous as any fundamentalism that history has produced. For in a world where anything or anyone can be owned, manipulated, and exploited for profit, everything and everyone will be.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 5, Corporations Unlimited, p. 138

Thomas Sowell photo
Neamat Imam photo
Anton Chekhov photo
André Breton photo

“Oneiric values have definitely won out over the others, and I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word "like."”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=baKRHNX7eo0C&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false
from: Point du Jour (Break of Day; 1934)
Breton's quote is often misquoted as The man who can't visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
after 1930

Donald J. Trump photo
David Spade photo

“Myspace is a great way to keep in touch with friends whom you don't care enough about to actually have a conversation with. Why bother calling to say 'How are you?' when you can just surf their page and post an mpeg of a guy farting on his cat?
[Myspace is] this website where young people can post pictures and info about themselves for anyone to see. When I first heard about it, I thought to myself, 'Finally a Yellow Pages for sex offenders. Why didn't I think of that?'
The most popular (American Idol) contestants have been: white people that sound black, young people that sound old, and straight guys that sound gay.
The final five are exactly like The Breakfast Club: There's the rebel(Chris Daughtry), the princess (Katharine McPhee), the nerd (Elliot Yamin), the weirdo (Paris Bennett)… and of course, the principal (Taylor Hicks). What? He's old!
(Ryan Phillippe & Reese Witherspoon) Broke up, (Kid Rock & Pamela Anderson) broke up, (Vince Vaughn & Jennifer Aniston) broke up, (Kate Moss & Pete Doherty) coked up. They said it wouldn't last; not the marriage, the stash. 007,.08, 1.2, 215. Came out, came out, (Tom Brady and Bridget Moynihan) came in, (Brady and Gisele Bündchen) came in. Hates Jews, went to rehab, loves Jews; hates gays, went to rehab, now loves gays; hates blacks, didn't go to rehab, still hates blacks. 'Father Knows Best', (with Britney Spears) 'Mad About You,' (Spears without panties) 'Leave It to Beaver.' New father, new father, new father? R. I. P., D. U. I., P. O. W. 'You're a hypocrite,' 'you're fat,' 'you're rude,' 'you're ugly,' whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. Stop fighting, you're both right. Booze, pot, Vicodin, crack, booze, pot, Vicodin, and crack.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

The Showbiz Show with David Spade

Jack Thompson (attorney) photo

“This is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer.”

Jack Thompson (attorney) (1951) American activist and disbarred attorney

[2007-04-20, Were video games to blame for massacre?, Winda Benedetti, MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220228/, 2014-11-18]

Clarence Darrow photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Giorgio Vasari photo
Henry Ford photo

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That's my main concern, and always will be.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Official blog, (July 2007) https://grrm.livejournal.com/17565.html?thread=2143645#t2143645

Thom Yorke photo
George Carlin photo

“Is there anyone noisier in the world than Bird Mallon?”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 1-10, p. 20; spoken by Annie

Chris Cornell photo

“Since it's not considered polite, and surely not politically-correct to come out and actually say that greed gets wonderful things done, let me go through a few of the millions of examples of the benefits of people trying to get more for themselves. There's probably widespread agreement that it's a wonderful thing that most of us own cars. Is there anyone who believes that the reason we have cars is because Detroit assembly line workers care about us? It's also wonderful that Texas cattle ranchers make the sacrifices of time and effort caring for steer so that New Yorkers can have beef on their supermarket shelves. It is also wonderful that Idaho potato growers arise early to do back-breaking work in the hot sun to ensure that New Yorkers also have potatoes on their supermarket shelves. Again, is there anyone who believes that ranchers and potato growers, who make these sacrifices, do so because they care about New Yorkers? They might hate New Yorkers. New Yorkers have beef and potatoes because Texas cattle ranchers and Idaho potato growers care about themselves and they want more for themselves. How much steak and potatoes would New Yorkers have if it all depended on human love and kindness? I would feel sorry for New Yorkers. Thinking this way bothers some people because they are more concerned with the motives behind a set of actions rather than the results. This is what Adam Smith, the father of economics, meant in The Wealth of Nations when he said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests."”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Ayn Rand photo
Grant Morrison photo
Pentti Linkola photo
E.M. Forster photo
Leonard Mlodinow photo

“Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.”

Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) British writer

Quoted in The Girl's Book of Positive Quotations By Steve Deger, Leslie Ann Gibson, p. 28

William Binney photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“.. not the familiar paradise, but the unknown - somewhere in a continent that hasn’t been discovered yet by anyone from the civilized countries - I have escaped [in his prints! ] because it is almost unbearable to be in our world.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): ..niet het bekende paradijs, maar het onbekende, ergens in een werelddeel dat nog door geen mensch uit de cultuurstaten is ontdekt – daarheen ben ik gevlucht [in zijn prenten!] omdat het in onze wereld haast niet meer uit te houden is.
in his letter (nr. 143) to Julia Henkels, 15 July 1942; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 120
Werkman is referring to his series prints 'Vrouweneiland / Women-island', D-288 - D-311, he made in 1942]
1940's

Henry Moore photo

“And for me Michelangelo's greatest work is one that was in his studio partly finished, partly unfinished when he died 'The Rondanini Pietà'. I don't know of any other single work of art by anyone that is more poignant, more moving. It isn't the most powerful of Michelangelo's works – it's a mixture, in fact, of two styles…. the changing became so drastic that I think he knocked the head off the sculpture… So the figure must originally have been a good deal taller. And if we see also the proportion of the length of the body of Christ compared with the length of the legs, there's no doubt that the whole top of the original sculpture has been cut away. Now this to me is a great question. Why should I and other sculptors I know, my contemporaries – I think that Giacometti feels this, I know Marino Marini feels it – find this work one of the most moving and greatest works we know of when it's a work which has such disunity in it?… But that's so moving, so touching: the position of the heads, the whole tenderness of the top part of the sculpture, is in my opinion more what it is by being in contrast with the rather finished, tough, leathery, typical Michelangelo legs. The top part is Gothic and the lower part is sort of Renaissance.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Henri Moore in his interview with David Silvester, in 'The Sunday Times Magazine', 16 Febr. 1964, pp. 18, 20-22
1955 - 1970

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Dmitriy Ustinov photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Peter Hitchens photo
KatieJane Garside photo

“Who's to say there'll be anyone here to remember me?”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On how she'll be remembered, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/jun/24/weekend7.weekend12 (2000)

Theodosius Dobzhansky photo
Robert Spencer photo