Quotes about anyone
page 33

Sajid Javid photo

“As home secretary, I am committed to doing everything in my power to ensure Britain does not become a safe haven for anyone who supports violence or abuse against Jewish people.”

Sajid Javid (1969) British politician

Sajid Javid vows to tackle anti-Semitism in UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47389912, BBC News, 27 February 2019
2019

Sajid Javid photo

“When it comes to gang-based child exploitation it is self-evident to anyone who cares to look that if you look at all the recent high-profile cases there is a high proportion of men that have Pakistani heritage.”

Sajid Javid (1969) British politician

'Wrong to ignore' ethnicity of grooming gangs - Javid https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46684638, BBC News, 26 December 2018
2018

Ernst Röhm photo
David Brin photo

“How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?”

Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about—as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.”
Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 13 (p. 255)

Shu-Sin photo

“That was how I instructed you. Why did you not act as I ordered you? You were not empowered to kill anyone, to blind people or to destroy cities; but I gave you authority to do so.”

Shu-Sin Sumerian king

To his general Sharrum-bani, Letter from Shu-Suen to Sharrum-bani about digging a trench http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section3/tr3116.htm, Correspondence of the Kings of Ur, Old Babylonian period, ca. 1800-1600 BCE, at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature; their original date of composition and their historical accuracy are debated.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“But it was a real nightmare when Walter threatened to kill me and our two daughters if we told anyone.”

Walter Keane (1915–2000) American plagiarist

Margaret Keane, Cited in "The lady behind those Keane-eyed kids"

Thiago Silva photo

“He is already in the category of Baresi, Sammer and anyone else you want to name. Ultimately what he wins will decide where he ranks, but his qualities make him stronger than all of them.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Laurent Blanc (PSG), 2013 http://www.leparisien.fr/psg-foot-paris-saint-germain/laurent-blanc-il-n-a-aucune-faille-05-04-2013-2698813.php
From coaches and club directors

Indra Nooyi photo

“Indra can drive as deep and hard as anyone I have ever met, but she can do it with a sense of heart and fun.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Roger Enrcio, Chief Executive, quoted in [Runkle, Beck Sheetz-, Sun Tzu for Women: The Art of War for Winning in Business, http://books.google.com/books?id=Q9V9mNj0Wd0C&pg=PA112, 18 December 2010, Adams Media, 978-1-4405-1178-3, 112–]

Premchand photo
Rajinikanth photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“Whatever problems anyone may have with the Capitol, believe me when I say that if it released its grip on the districts for even a short time, the entire system would collapse.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

[...]
"It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down."
President Snow and Katniss, p. 21
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Alasdair Gray photo

“A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.
"Prometheus", pp. 208-9.
Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

Jim Butcher photo
Rod Blagojevich photo

“By the way, I should say, if anyone wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly.”

Rod Blagojevich (1956) Former Governor of Illinois

At a press conference, December 8, 2008, in Chicago, IL. CNN http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/09/illinois.governor/?iref=mpstoryview
About wiretaps

Paul Scholes photo
Paul Scholes photo
Theodor Morell photo
Nicole Richie photo
Geert Wilders photo
Ausonius photo

“In the history of versification did anyone ever juggle so wildly well with iambics, sapphics, dactylics, anapestics, and all the rest? He fabricated verses most ingeniously, most enthusiastically. His virtuosity is amazing. Almost every line he wrote was a tour de force.”

Ausonius (310–395) poet

And in spite of all this highly self-conscious technical facility he managed occasionally to write poetry.
Edward Townsend Booth, God Made the Country (1946), p. 37.
Criticism

Trinny Woodall photo
Gottfried Helnwein photo

“If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last fifty years could be called a star, then there is only one person who meets all the criteria: Gottfried Helnwein.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Presence and Time: Gottfried Helnwein's Pictures http://www.helnwein-museum.com/article2534.html, Stella Rollig, director of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, 2006

David Mitchell photo

“We--by whom I mean anyone over sixty--commit two offenses just bu existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk to slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drugs barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide.”

Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.
"The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", p. 315 (Nook edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Margaret Caroline Anderson photo

“How can anyone be interested in war?”

Margaret Caroline Anderson (1886–1973) American magazine editor

that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well-chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it — this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?
The Strange Necessity (1969), part 1.

“Consequently if our work embodies these beliefs, it must insult anyone who is spiritually attuned to interior decoration; pictures for the home…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb in thier common 'Manifesto', New York Times, 13 June 13, 1943; republished in: Stella Paul (1999), Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 159
1940 - 1950

Bret Easton Ellis photo

“I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers.”

And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307264305&view=auqa

Ze Frank photo

“Okay, roll-call, no talking. Benny, Marc; Ethel, Shakina, nice shoes. Bobo twins, anyone seen the Bobo twins? Those Bobo twins.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_05-30-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Richard Wright photo
Max Weber photo
Richard Bach photo

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.”

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

"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate," debate at University of Toronto, (2006-11-15). Hitchens argued the affirmative position. Info http://hhdce.sa.utoronto.ca/formaldebates_20062007.htm#20062007_3; video http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/03/free_speech_6.html.
2000s, 2006

Margaret Cho photo
Walker Percy photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Teal Swan photo
Steve Jobs photo
W. H. Auden photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Dennis Prager photo
André Aciman photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“The only right you have with anyone in life is the right to walk away.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 25 (p. 270)

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
David Hilbert photo
Learned Hand photo
Elizabeth Hand photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“My administration has done a job on really working across government and with the private sector, and it’s been incredible. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, I have to say. Unfortunately, the end result of the group we’re fighting — which are hundreds of billions and trillions of germs, or whatever you want to call them — they are bad news. This virus is bad news and it moves quickly, and it spreads as easily as anything anyone has ever seen.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in Remarks by President Trump in a Meeting with Supply Chain Distributors on COVID-19 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-supply-chain-distributors-covid-19/ (March 29, 2020), whitehouse.gov.
2020s, 2020, March

John Allen Paulos photo
Ruth Bader Ginsburg photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.”

Part 2, Chapter 3 (p. 78)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

Ron Paul photo

“What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick?””

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

“The moral choices that Trump poses to anyone with a conscience or love of country are only made more clear by the ludicrous irony of his own story.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

Immanuel Kant photo
Michael Cohen (lawyer) photo

“Anyone who believes that @realDonaldTrump is a racist doesn't know #Trump at all. Shame on the protesting rabbis with #AIPAC”

Michael Cohen (lawyer) (1966) American attorney

Tweet (17 March 2016) https://twitter.com/michaelcohen212/status/710667346088730624

Massoud Rajavi photo

“We are not rivals to anyone seeking to assume power. And most certainly, no one can rival the MEK when it comes to honesty, sacrifice and paying the price.”

Massoud Rajavi (1948–2003) Iranian politician

Massoud Rajavi as quoted in OIAC https://oiac.org/regime-overthrow-is-certain-iran-will-be-free/

Arun Shourie photo

“Caste is real. The working class is real. Being a Naga is real. But ‘India is just a geographical expression!’ Similarly, being a Muslim of course is real – Islam must be seen and talked of as one block of granite – ... But Hinduism? Why, there is no such thing: it is just an aggregation, a pile of assorted beliefs and practices – ... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none. That is what our progressive ideologues declaim, as we have seen. In a word, the parts alone are real. The whole is just a construct. India has never been one, these ideologues insist – disparate peoples and regions were knocked together by the Aryans, by the Mughals, by the British for purposes of empire. Anyone who wants to use that construct – India – as the benchmark for determining the sort of structure under which we should live has a secret agenda – of enforcing Hindu hegemony.
This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities: the gods and goddesses the Hindus revered; the temples and idols in which they were enshrined; the texts they held sacred; the language in which those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was even in mid-nineteenth-century the lingua franca – that is, Sanskrit; and the group whose special duty it had been over aeons to preserve that way of life – the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up the parts – the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which they calculated would be the most accessible to the missionaries and the empire – the innocent tribals, the untouchables.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Arun Shourie photo
Arun Shourie photo
Sheikh Ahmad-e Jami photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Wendell Berry photo

“I twitch every time anyone mentions ‘Germanic’ culture.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Replying to @lhardingwrites, Halsall, Guy, 19 May 2019, Twitter, http://archive.is/Pvr6O, 27 January 2020, 1 February 2020 https://twitter.com/Real_HistoryGuy/status/1130126559413772289,
Quotaes, Twitter (2019)

Sean Carroll photo
Louis Brandeis photo
George Adamski photo
Mariko Tamaki photo

“Comics allow you to really subtly do those different perspectives without necessarily telling you explicitly what anyone is thinking, just what they’re saying or what they’re doing, which is incredibly valuable I think in storytelling.”

Mariko Tamaki (1975) Canadian writer and artist

On comic storytelling in "In Conversation with Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki" https://roommagazine.com/interview/conversation-jillian-tamaki-mariko-tamaki in Room Magazine (June 2015)

Bessie Love photo

“The best thing in the world that can happen to anyone is to lose everything. I know. It's happened to me on several occasions.”

Bessie Love (1898–1986) American actress (1898–1986)

On loss and failure, from [September 7, 1959, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 64, On Broadway, Dorothy, Kilgallen]

Seneca the Younger photo
Kim Novak photo

“It was a tool for me. I could express what I was feeling, whether it's good feelings or bad feelings. In that case it was bad feelings. But it was like all of a sudden, 'Who cares what Donald Trump or anyone else thinks of you?'”

Kim Novak (1933) American actress

Source: CBS Sunday Morning interview (2020)
Context: Answering the question "What did painting do for you after you came home from the Oscars?"

Bhagawan Nityananda photo
Ibn Hazm photo
Jerry Seinfeld photo

“The comedian studies himself; the actor studies other people. The comedian wants to be himself; the actor wants to be anyone but themselves.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...</p><p>In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.</p><p>We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.</p><p>Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.</p><p>Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.</p>
Source: The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 36-37

Ted Kennedy photo
Benito Mussolini photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“And where did anyone get the brainless opinion that the super-rich are too wealthy to steal? ...from Ford to Hughes to Iacocca and Trump and the other tycoon redeemers, we have an exact demonstration that nobody is more covetous and greedy than those who have far too much."”

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

"Billionaire Populism" (1992)
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
Source: [New York, The Nation, Christopher, Hitchens, Billionaire Populism, July 1992]

Umair Ahmad photo
Prevale photo

“Give value to every moment you live, remember that time does not wait for anyone.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Dai valore ad ogni momento che vivi, ricorda che il tempo non aspetta nessuno.
Source: prevale.net

Audrey Hepburn photo
Gregory Palamas photo
Tracy Chapman photo

“I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in…That's what everyone should do with their lives…stand up for what they believe in, or try to do some good in the world. I don't think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else.”

Tracy Chapman (1964) American singer-songwriter

On how artist expression can be a form of political activism in “A militant mellows” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/sep/28/artsfeatures.popandrock in The Guardian (27 Sep 2002)

“I don't think anyone should tap you on the shoulder and tell you that it's time to sit down and retire. Imagine if I told you, "You know what, you should really hang it up right now."”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

As women, we need to do more to support each other. And I think it's a lot of old rules that are being broken.
Erika Jayne interview to MTV http://www.mtv.com/news/2884785/erika-jayne-interview/ (2016)

Matthew Stover photo

“When you pray is there anyone there listening?”

David H. C. Read (1910–2001) British chaplain

Start of the sermon "What Response to Our Prayers?", as quoted by Eugene L. Lowry in The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (2001), p. 36