Quotes about nobody
page 13

Horace Walpole photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“To the knights of faith nobody believes.”

”The Thin Thread,” p. 64
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Warden with No Keys”

Ron Paul photo
David Gerrold photo
Mohammad Khatami photo

“Terrorism, which means killing civilians in whatever name or title, lacks morality, and nobody who lacks such principle will go to heaven.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

During a speech at Council on American-Islamic Relations http://www.ghazali.net/archives2006/html/khatmi_blasts.html (dead link). (8 September 2006)
Attributed

Lee Kuan Yew photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Ali Khamenei photo
Billy Joel photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Thomas Eakins photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo

“Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint.”

Source: Blind Lake (2003), Chapter 10 (p. 116)

Billy Joel photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Is it so big a mystery
what god and man and world are?
No! but nobody knows how to solve it
so the mystery hangs on.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

As translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Venetian Epigrams (1790)

Steve Jobs photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Michael Savage photo

“At least some Americans are still having children. Unfortunately, many of those children spend their formative years being taught how to surrender. The emasculation of American boys is one step short of suicide. […] Schoolyards used to be filled with kids at recess playing games like "kill the guy with the ball." Nobody died. Boys played with G. I. Joes and girls played with dolls. Kids played freeze tag without a single incident of sexual harassment. […] Not too many years ago, cartoons were filled with violence. Bugs Bunny tied a gun barrel in a knot and Elmer Fudd's gun went kaboom, covering his own head in black soot. Wile E. Coyote chased the Road Runner and fell off a cliff to his destruction. We as children watched Superman cartoons, but we knew not to try and jump off the roof. Teenage boys watched Rocky and Rambo and Conan films. Then they went home without trying to kill anybody. […] We did not need liberals to tell us the difference between pretend and real life. Common sense and our parents handled that. Now schools across the country are canceling gym class. Dodgeball apparently promotes aggression […]. Even rock-paper-scissors is too violent. Rocks and scissors could be used by children to harm each other. Paper requires murdering trees. It's no wonder that Islamists produce strapping young men while America produces sensitive crybabies […]. Muslim children are taught hate in madrassas. They are taught how to kill infidels and the blasphemers. American boys are suspended from school for arranging their school lunch vegetables in the shape of a gun. […] During World War II, young boys volunteered to go overseas to save the world. […] Now American kids on college campuses retreat to their safe spaces to escape from potential microagressions. Islamists cut off heads and limbs and our young boys shriek at the drop of a microaggression. And we haven't seen the worst of it.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama (2016)

Asger Jorn photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933) http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
1930s
Source: [Tritch, Teresa, F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/, March 7, 2014, New York Times, March 7, 2014]

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau photo
Luise Rainer photo

“I was nobody to make a pass to. I was very thin like a boy and I was very un-sexy.”

Luise Rainer (1910–2014) German-born Austrian and American film actress

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

Arsène Wenger photo

“Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don’t know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

About Nani, (December 2010) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/8222215/Arsene-Wenger-mocks-Nani-for-dismissing-Arsenals-Premier-League-title-chances.html

Wilt Chamberlain photo
Stephen Baxter photo

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Hank Aaron photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“Nobody but a highlander can go about without his trousers.”

Henry Savile Clarke (1841–1893)

Hugger-Mugger

Mickey Spillane photo
Kenneth Grahame photo
Tim Buck photo

“I'm not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody's gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won't have it, okay?”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

NOW interview (2004)

Carl Sagan photo

“Nobody listens to mathematicians.”

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 262

Mickey Spillane photo

“Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.
Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn't notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.
There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they were huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.
So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.
I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.
Like eyes and faces. And voices.
I buried my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again, wondering what the judge would say if he could see me now. Maybe he'd laugh because I was supposed to be so damn tough, and here I was with hands that wouldn't stand still and an empty feeling inside my chest.”

One Lonely Night (1951)

François Englert photo
Michael Crichton photo
John Rhys-Davies photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Glen Cook photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Carl Schmitt photo
Alexander McCall Smith photo

“Rand always says, “Never pass up an opportunity to pass moral judgment.” Well I say: “Look for an opportunity to do something more useful instead.” Nobody was led to virtue by being told he was a scoundrel.”

Nathaniel Branden (1930–2014) Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer

Interview by Alec Mouhibian in The Free Radical (November 2004)

Jay Leno photo

“And as you know, this whole Hillary e-mail scandal brought Anthony Wiener back into the news. Now here's a question nobody has asked. Anthony Wiener is Jewish, right? Right? So does this scandal make him a Hebrew National Wiener?”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Guest monologue on The Tonight Show http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jay-leno-takes-jimmy-fallons-867267, 31 October, 2016
The Tonight Show

Antonio Gramsci photo

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Edmund Hillary photo

“Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

As quoted in Wise Guys : Brilliant Thoughts and Big Talk from Real Men (2005) by Allan Zullo, p. 5

Susan Cain photo
Eddie Griffin photo
George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.”

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

"George R. R. Martin Interview GAME OF THRONES" http://collider.com/george-r-r-martin-interview-game-of-thrones/ by Christina Radish, Collider (17 April 2011)

Chris Grayling photo

“Nobody has ever said the negotiation would be straightforward and simple.”

Chris Grayling (1962) British politician

Interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05k0894 (15 October 2017)
2017

“Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it.”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter Five (Management Must Manage), p. 86.

Etty Hillesum photo
Otis Redding photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Mr. T photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Charles Stross photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998, as quoted by http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-24/tech/30081331_1_singaporean-lee-kuan-yew-political-landscape
1990s

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark photo

“You can cycle through town and nobody shouts, "look, it's the Princess" – they are used to seeing us. Some people come up and say hello and that's fine. It's no big deal.”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

On royal life, 'Courtesies and curtsies: what it takes to interview Princess 'Maz, Interview with DailyLife.com.au http://www.dailylife.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/courtesies-and-curtsies-what-it-takes-to-interview-princess-maz-20131011-2vcro.html (11 October 2013)

Margaret Mead photo

“Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Culture and Commitment : A Study of the Generation Gap (1970), p. 72
1970s

George Bernard Shaw photo

“In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#101
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“Mister Crawford, nobody is more sick of this war than I am. That's why we're moving south, to end it as quickly as possible. Lincoln said at Gettysburg we must preserve this nation so a government of the people won't perish, but you newspaper boys never pay much attention to that, did you?”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

North and South, Book II https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=vopVVBiC80g#General_Grant_s_Strategies (1986).
In fiction, <span class="plainlinks"> North and South, Book II http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090490/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast (1986)</span>

James Howard Kunstler photo
Daniel J. Bernstein photo

“"But I was never put on trial, never convicted!"
"You are not entitled to a trial."
"Anybody's entitled to a trial, damn you!"
"That is absolutely true. But you see you are not anybody. You are nobody.”

Bk. 1, Ch. "The Conviction of His Courage" <!-- [Italics in source] --> (His record having been erased from government computers.)
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

Steve Sailer photo
Glen Cook photo

“Nobody knew what the Company wanted. Various witnesses assigned motives according to their own fears. Few came anywhere near the mark.”

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 33, “Juniper: The Encounter” (p. 368)

Gustav Holst photo
Alexander Grothendieck photo

“The introduction of the digit 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps…”

Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) French mathematician

R. Brown and T. Porter,Analogy, concepts and methodology, in mathematics, UWB Math Preprint, May 26,2006 Link http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/FOAGjun1113public.pdf

“I'm here to say there is a choice. If you want to stick to the status quo, pick the Republicans or Democrats, but don't complain. Nobody can do a better job than I can.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party hopeful - gives voters third choice, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 8, 2010]

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as “the journey homeward to habitual self.” You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

Donald J. Trump photo

“It's an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.”

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

Speaking at the National Governors Association meeting at the White House https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/feb/27/trump-healthcare-complicated-budget-video (27 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February

Hugo Ball photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
James Morrison photo

“Some people say that i'm not worth it
I've made mistakes but nobody's perfect”

James Morrison (1984) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

One Last Chance
Song lyrics, Undiscovered (James Morrison album) (2006)

Dylan Moran photo
Maddox photo
Fausto Cercignani photo

“If you despise habits so much, it is because you do not realize that nobody can do without them.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Robert Hunter photo

“Ain't nobody messin' with you but you”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

"Althea"
Song lyrics, (1980)

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Michel Sabbah photo

“Nobody can tell us Christians how to dress, how to live or how to pray.”

Michel Sabbah (1933) Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem

Christmas under Hamas rule, BBC News, 22 December 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7154134.stm, Quote from a statement made during his visit to Gaza City on possible implementation of Islamic fundamentalist internal policies like mandatory hijab and other measures