Quotes about nobody
page 4

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogies his slavery”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

The War and Russian Social-Democracy (September 1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s
Context: Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogies his slavery (e. g., calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc., a "defense of the fatherland" of the Great Russians") - such a slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing.

Christopher Morley photo

“That's what makes it worth while — I'm doing something that nobody else from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever thought of.”

Parnassus on Wheels (1917)
Context: "Lord!" he said, "when you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue — you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night — there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean. Jiminy! If I were the baker or the butcher or the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came by — just waiting for my stuff. And here I go loaded with everlasting salvation — yes, ma'am, salvation for their little, stunted minds — and it's hard to make 'em see it. That's what makes it worth while — I'm doing something that nobody else from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever thought of. It's a new field, but by the bones of Whitman, it's worth while. That's what this country needs — more books!"

Rajneesh photo

“Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

Sat Chit Anand
Context: Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person, you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. On the contrary, you are grateful that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy, sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It does many things, it is very creative; it shares all that it has, but it is not a responsibility, remember. Responsibility is an ugly word in comparison to love. Love is natural. Responsibility is created by the cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate you in the name of God, in the name of the nation, in the name of family, in the name of religion -- any fiction will do. But they don't talk about love. On the contrary, they are all against love, because love is unable to be controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no nations, and there is no question of any fight.

Anthony de Mello photo

“Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Persecution
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries.
Said the Master, Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Wilhelm Von Humboldt photo

“There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

As quoted in Wilhelm von Humboldt (1970), by P. Berglar, p. 87, and "Profiles of Educators: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835)" by Karl-Heinz Günther, in Prospects, Vol. 18, Issue 1 (March 1988)
Context: There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.

Malcolm X photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Is There a God?" http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/isThereGod.htm (1952), commissioned by Illustrated Magazine but not published until its appearance in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943-68, ed. John G. Slater and Peter Köllner (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 543-48
1950s
Context: Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Barack Obama photo

“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman — not me, not Bill, nobody — more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)
Context: You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. You can read about it. You can study it. But until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis, or send young people to war. But Hillary has been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions. She knows what’s at stake in the decisions our government makes — what’s at stake for the working family, for the senior citizen, or the small business owner, for the soldier, for the veteran. And even in the midst of crisis, she listens to people, and she keeps her cool, and she treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds, no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.
That is the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman — not me, not Bill, nobody — more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo

“Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. I : The Craft
Context: I had a vision of the face of destiny.
Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.
The squall has ceased to be a cause of my complaint. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.

Joe Louis photo
Darren Criss photo
Al Capone photo
Al Capone photo
Rajneesh photo
Menachem Begin photo

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

The much less verbose true quote, from Begin's "acerbic" visit to the US Congress in 1982 (during the Lebanon War), as found in Time Magazine's contemporary report http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,925497-6,00.html (George J. Church, July 05, 1982):
"Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles!"
"Sir, do not threaten us with cutting aid. First of all, you should know that this is not a one-way street. You help us, and we are very grateful for your help; but this is a two-way street: We do a lot for you. And also in recent battles we did a lot for the United States; and I gave some examples, but this is not the place to go into them. Therefore, do not threaten us with cuts in aid, but take note: That if at any time you demand of us to yield on a principle in which we believe, while threatening to cut aid, we will not abandon the principle in which we believe - and propose cutting aid. The argument went approximately thus."
On the other hand, contemporary reports give the true quote as also being far less verbose.
Source: attributed as alleged reply to Senator Joe Biden in Ronn Torossian's op-ed "Menachem Begin To Joe Biden: I Am Not A Jew With Trembling Knees" https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/menachem-begin-to-joe-biden-i-am-not-a-jew-with-trembling-knees/2015/04/03, in 2015 without source. Possibly of earlier origin.
Source: As found in Time Magazine's contemporary report http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,925497-6,00.html

Zinedine Zidane photo

“Nobody knows if Zidane is an angel or demon. He smiles like Saint Teresa and grimaces like a serial killer.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Jean-Louis Murat, 2004 http://www.theguardian.com/football/2004/apr/04/sport.features

George Wallace photo
James Baldwin photo
James Baldwin photo

“Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden,' Jacques said. And then: 'I wonder why.”

I have thought about Jacques' question since. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road - and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright - and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or.
Pt. 1, Ch. 2 - p.22
Giovanni's Room (1956)

David Belle photo

“Down there we know, the streets we know, but up here? Nobody's been here.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

—TFI a French channel http://youtube.com/watch?v=cBapQdXxGKg

John Lennon photo

“When I was about twelve, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius."”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius — I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.
John Lennon interview with Rolling Stone magazine (December 1970)

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“Nobody tells me fuck all!”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show

Tupac Shakur photo

“What I want you to take seriously, is what we have to do for the youth. Because we're coming up in a totally different world. This is not the same world that you had this is not 6th Street its not. You grew up, we grew up B. C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? We did not grow up without parents. You had parents that told you this and that and told you what went on back in the day. You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product. You understand what I'm saying? So that means it's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of "these children". It hurts that I got to, it bothers me, not hurts, that I have to sidestep my youth to stand up and do some shit that somebody else is suppose to be doing. You understand what I'm saying? There's too many men out here for me to be doing this, because it ain't my turn yet. I'm supposed to be following behind him getting the knowledge. I don't even got a chance to get the fucking knowledge. I can't go to college. There's too much problems out here. I don't got the money. Nobody does. You understand what I'm saying? So what I'm saying is, it's not as easy as we're mapping it out to be. We've got to stay real. Before we can be new African we've gotta be black first. You understand? We've gotta get our brothers from the streets like Harriett Tubman did. Why can't we look at that and see exactly what she was doing? Like Malcolm did, the real Malcolm, before the Nation of Islam. You've got to remember, this was a pimp. You know what I'm saying, we forgot about all that. In our strive to be enlightened we forgot about all our brothers in the street, about all our dope dealers, our pushers and our pimps, and that's who's teaching the new generation, because y'all not doing it. I'm sorry. But, it's the pimps and pushers who's teaching us. So, if you got a problem with how we were raised, its because they was the only ones who could do it. They the only ones who did it, because everybody else wanted to go to college, and you know, yeah everything's changed, they were the ones telling you 'the white man ain't shit, there you go, check this out young blood, you take this product, you switch it, you get money and that's how you beat the white man, you get money, you get the hell up out of here.'”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home.
1990s, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Atlanta (1992)

Tupac Shakur photo
Marquis de Sade photo
Matka Tereza photo

“Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His – so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

To the good God, nothing is little because He is so great and we so small- that is why He stoops down and takes the trouble to make those little things for us- to give us a chance to prove our love for Him.
Source: Knoansw, A Simple Path Quotes – The Inspiring Book Of Mother Teresa, September 03, 2020 https://knoansw.com/a-simple-path-quotes-mother-teresa/

Barack Obama photo

“Nobody represents America’s values better than the American people, and I believe this contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Matka Tereza photo

“I was amazed when I learned that in the West so many young people are on drugs. I tried to understand the reason for this. Why? The answer is, “because in the family there is nobody who cares about them.””

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

When receiving the Nobel peace price in 1979. As quoted from Hitchens, C. (2012). The missionary position: Mother Theresa in theory and practice.
Source: Fathers and mothers are so busy they have no time. Young parents work, and the child lives in the street and goes his own way. We speak of peace. These are the things that threaten peace. I think that today peace is threatened by abortion, too, which is a true war, the direct killing of a child by its own mother. In the Bible we read that God clearly said: “Even though a mother did forget her infant, I will not forget him.”Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace. We who are here today were wanted by our parents. We would not be here if our parents had not wanted us.We want children, and we love them. But what about the other millions? Many are concerned about the children, like those in Africa, who die in great numbers either from hunger or for other reasons. But millions of children die intentionally, by the will of their mothers. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves, or one another? Nothing.

Peter Wessel Zapffe photo

“Nobody has ever managed to explain what it is they are longing after in religion, but it is quite clear what they are trying to escape from – this earthly vale of tears, one’s untenable existential situation.”

The Last Messiah (1933)
Source: trans. Peter Reed & David Rothenberg https://ia803202.us.archive.org/15/items/20200821_20200821_1659/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf, page 8

Kanye West photo
Vitali Klitschko photo

“Nobody wants to die, everybody wants to live, but the Russians want to rebuild a Russian empire and we don’t want to live in a Russian empire. The Russians try to put us on our knees, but we’re fighting right now for freedom and for the future of our children and our country.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

"Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says he’s ready to give his life for Ukraine" https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/vitali-klitschko-says-hes-ready-to-give-his-life-for-ukraine/, New York Post, 18 March 2022

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo

“Everybody told me to be a man. Nobody told me how.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

John Steinbeck photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Karl Lagerfeld photo
A.A. Milne photo

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Amy Tan photo
David Klass photo
Carson McCullers photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Sophie Kinsella photo

“No human on God's earth is a nobody.”

Source: Twenties Girl

Michael Connelly photo
A.A. Milne photo
Robert Anton Wilson photo
François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Source: The Genius of Christianity or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion

Salman Rushdie photo

“Nobody can judge an internal injury by the size of the superficial wound.”

Variant: You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
Source: The Satanic Verses

Mark Millar photo
Mikhail Bulgakov photo
Stephen King photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Not found in Burke's writings. Appears to be a paraphrase of "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little." sourced to Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845).

Assata Shakur photo

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who oppressing them.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Variant: Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Ned Vizzini photo
Louis Auchincloss photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Northrop Frye photo

“Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at. [p.93]”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence
Context: Freedom has nothing to do with lack of training; it can only be the product of training. You're not free to move unless you've learned to walk, and not free to play the piano unless you practise. Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use the language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to be learned and worked at.

Bob Dylan photo
Adam Smith photo

“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 14.
Source: The Wealth of Nations

Hannah Arendt photo
Rick Riordan photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.”

Variant: All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.
Source: Hear the Wind Sing

Charles Bukowski photo

“Nobody's talking to me, but nobody's hassling me either. I guess you can't have everything.”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

Meg Cabot photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Albert Einstein photo

“Why is it nobody understands me and everybody likes me?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As quoted in New York Times article "The Einstein Theory of Living; At 65 he leads the simplest of lives — and grapples with the most complex thoughts." http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00713FA3A58157A93C0A81788D85F408485F9 (12 March 1944)
Variants:
Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?
As quoted in The Dark Side of Shakespeare : An Elizabethan Courtier, Diplomat, Spymaster, & Epic Hero, p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=-5SxGKrTRUEC&pg=PA126 (2003) by W. Ron Hess
Everyone likes me, yet nobody understands me.
As quoted in "The culture of Einstein" at MSNBC (18 March 2005) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/
1940s

Mitch Albom photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I was walking through the leaves Falling from the trees.
Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi

Jennifer Weiner photo
Rachel Caine photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Jane Austen photo
Augusten Burroughs photo
Michael Chabon photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“theres no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.”

Variant: there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Rick Riordan photo
Dr. Seuss photo
Connie Willis photo
Janet Fitch photo
Stephen Kendrick photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Ray Romano photo
Bob Dylan photo
Erica Jong photo
Michael Crichton photo