Quotes about person
page 100

“Rajeev used to play with Gandhiji in the same way in which his mother, Indira used to play with Gandhiji in Sabaramati ashram when she was four years old. One day, Rajeev plucked some flowers and kept them at Gandhiji’s feet. Gandhiji laughed and said – Rajeev! Don’t you know that flowers are not kept at the feet of a person who is alive?”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

Meena Agrawal, in p. 14. This incident happened on 29 January 1948 and on 30 January 1948, Gandhiji was assassinated.

Way, Flowers, Personality

“His favourite car, the copper blue 180D Mercedes Benz, was in his possession till he breathed his last. A person with varied interests, he had to his credit several trophies won as an amateur horse rider at various places in the country.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

The New Indian Express, in “An Avid Shutterbug, Driving Enthusiast, Sanskrit Scholar (17 December 2013)”

Cars, Horse, Personality, Country

“We are an egalitarian State, (royalty) should go…. to either keep this temple or else become president of a thousand other temples. Except Pallivetta (the royal ritualistic hunt of the deities) and the Arat, when the deity is taken in procession to the seashore, we lost all other privileges. We sold our personal assets to keep this temple.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

In 1971, when the privy purse was abolished to the royal families, in "Royal vignettes: Travancore - Simplicity graces this House (30 March 2003)"

Personality

“There are many other evidences of Swathi’s efforts to promote education and modern science…. Many of his reforms were progressive and many put an end to superstitions. One instance would be enough to mention in this regard – abolishing the practice of Sucheendram Kaimukku where accused persons were to dip their fingers in boiling oil to prove their innocence.”

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore

Dr Achuthsankar S Nair, in "An enlightened and princely patron of true science".
About Swathi Thirunal

Education, Effort, Science, Personality

“Jon Ive is off the fucking rails and the only person who could rein him in is no longer among the living. … no way would Steve have ever been so vulgar as to be driven around by a chauffeur in a Bentley, like a modern-day pharaoh. … Jon Ive is 47 years old, secretly running Apple, and dangerously out of control.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

Apple Design Boss Jon Ive Gets Chauffeured To Work In A Bentley http://valleywag.gawker.com/apple-design-boss-jon-ive-gets-chauffeured-to-work-in-a-1686287300 in ValleyWag (17 February 2015)

Way, Personality

“Swami Chinmayananda being the first person to have translated the Gita in English, played an important role in propagating this text across the world to all age groups.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Sri Jayendra Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, in Chinmayananda spread the message of `Gita' http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2001-12-25/mumbai/27232673_1_gita-shankaracharya-swami About Chinmayananda

Age, World, Personality

“Narayana Murthy is a role model for millions of Indians. An iconic figure in the country, he is widely respected and looked up not only for his business leadership but also for his ethics and personal conduct. He represents the face of the new, resurgent India to the world.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India in [Murthy, N.R.Narayana, Better India, A Better World, http://books.google.com/books?id=E5FfYJmodk0C, 2010, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-306857-0]

World, Business, Personality, Country

“Razaji said that the title of the show is Vistaar and by that he means expansion. But Vistaar to me, when I look at his body of work, means expansion inside. As much as he has gone outside and spread his vibration, that much he has equally and as importantly, gone inside his soul, so that there is no difference between Raza the artist and Raza the person. And that is what makes this show really special.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Quoted by Art connoisseur Sangeeta Chopra in "This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza}.

Making love, Soul, Personality

“The most discussed building in Mumbai is probably the twenty –seven- story of Mukesh Ambani India’s wealthiest man and the head of Reliance Industries. Ambani’s personal wealth is estimated at just under $ 25 billion, just about a billion for each floor of his Mumbai home.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Inside Out, India and China: Local Politics Go Global

Home, Personality, Wealth

“The instant Waheeda Rehman arrived for her ten days shooting in Calcutta, she charmed every member of Ray’s unit. She lacked star airs and graces, never behaved in a pretentious manner and was content to go about off the set in her own face without make-up. There was an unspoilt quality about her personality and she was conspicuously receptive to Ray’s direction. She was pliable, with few ingrained mannerisms.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Author of Man Seton on Waheeda rehman on the sets of Satayjit Ray’s film Abhijan in [Seton, Marie, Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray, http://books.google.com/books?id=hVILvhgqN6QC&pg=PA225, 2003, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-302972-4, 225–]

Making love, Star, Personality

“EMS was uniquely positioned to analyze the various phases of the national movement and the role of Gandhi. He began his political life as an ardent Gandhian. Through out his life, while d adhering to the Marxist world outlook, he practiced many of the Gandhian principles of simplicity and personal austerity that are cherished by Indians.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

Praksah Karat in “EMS on Gandhi” quoted in "The Mahatma and the Ism" in page=8.
About E.M.S.

Life, World, Personality

“Every once in a blue moon, is born a person, who has the clarity of vision, and the greatness of deed, to make us all recognize the dizzying heights the human spirit can really achieveŠBaba Amte is one of those people.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

By Neesha Mirchandani
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

People, Making love, Personality

“She is a dreamer… she lives in her own world. She imagines a lot of things that suit her psyche as an actor. She is a very genuine, warm and a very sensitive person… And no denying the fact a very good learner. It has been an amazing experience to work with her; she is a perfect actress.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

Comment by Muzaffar Ali said.
At 55, Rekha still an engima, an icon

World, Imagination, Personality, Perfection

“Rekha, a photogenic girl with seductive eyes, languished in insubstantial roles. The audience was floored when there was a swift change in her screen personality, as well as her style of acting. She paid painstaking attention to her make-up and acting technique. She improved her dress sense and recorded albums to promote physical fitness. What Jane Fonda did for aerobics in America, Rekha did for yoga in India.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

Quoted in Love, anger, the works!, 7 December 2013, Filmfare http://downloads.movies.indiatimes.com/site/june2002/flashback.html,

Making love, Girl, Sense, Change

“The celebrated Hindi film actress has a cult of personality surrounding her that is unparalleled among other actresses and is often the subject of particularly fascinating urban legend.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

Susan Dewey in [Dewey, Susan, Making Miss India Miss World: Constructing Gender, Power, and the Nation in Postliberalization India, http://books.google.com/books?id=-WamxY5bQtIC&pg=PA111, 2008, Syracuse University Press, 978-0-8156-3176-7, 111–]

Personality

“He was a person who could bring out the best in others. There are some leaders who bring out the worst in others. He brought out the best.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Arun Shourie. NDTV. "Let's Have Tea": When Atal Bihari Vajpayee Made A Point With 3 Words https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/atal-bihari-vajpayee-death-lets-have-tea-when-atal-bihari-vajpayee-made-a-point-with-3-words-1901754 August 17, 2018

Personality

“It is impossible to name another person in this world who can be said to be equal to Tyagaraja in Rama Bhakthi.”

Tyagaraja (1767–1847) Carnatic musician and composer

World, Personality

“I have had such close opportunities of watching and for whom I entertain so sincere a regard as the young Maharaja of Mysore. Indeed, I think I may add that I should not have come all the way from Simla at this season of the year had I not felt the keenest personal interest both in this State and in its future Ruler. About the latter I shall have a word to say presently. But first let me explain how it is that the fortunes of the Mysore State occupy such a place in the concern and regard of the Government of India…. The young Maharaja whom I am about to instal has recently attained his eighteenth birthday. He has passed through a minority of nearly eight years. They have not been idle or vapid years spent in enjoyment or dissipated in idleness. They have been years of careful preparation for the duties that lie before him and of laborious training for his exalted state. It is no light thing to assume the charge of 5,000,000 of people and it is no perfunctory training that is required for such a task.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

Viceroy Lord Curzon in his investiture speech installing him as the Maharaja of Mysore stated in a Durbar held on 8 August 1902. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 187 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt, From Modern Mysore

People, Lie, Way, Birthday

“An organization comes into being when (1) there are persons able to communicate with each other (2) who are willing to contribute action (3) to accomplish a common purpose. The elements of an organization are therefore (1) communication; (2) willingness to serve; and (3) common purpose. These elements are necessary and sufficient conditions initially, and they are found in all such organizations. The third element, purpose, is implicit in the definition. Willingness to serve, and communication, and the interdependence of the three elements in general, and their mutual dependence in specifie cooperative systems, are matters of experience and observation.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 82; Highlighted section cited among others in: Dennis K. Mumby (2012), Organizational Communication: A Critical Approach. p. 8

Communication, Dependency, Personality

“For twelve months now, since I first began the practice of law, since I became an attorney, a man who speak for others, a counselor at law who has the power to address the court, that’s right, a big man, a mature person who helps others in distress—for approximately 365 days time has been nothing but a never-ending experience that meets me in the morning just like it left me off the night before. No longer am I the clear-headed mathematician of my college years. I used to have the answers; and if I didn’t, I could always turn to the back of the book or ask Professor Blackburn at Wednesday morning’s advanced algebra class. For a year now, my only conscious concern has been the pain in my stomach, the arguments of Dr. Serbin, and the schedules of the television shows. I know them all by heart. I can quote every single fucking show on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, and, you won’t believe it, even on the educational station, Channel 9. I am the world’s only living T. V. Guide, that’s really what I am. And they want me to counsel them!”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 24.

Pain, Books, World, Education

“The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference—the only difference in their eyes—between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 15 (pp. 184-185, quoting the fictional work Things I Should Have Learned by Now, Volume II, written by story character Quellcrist Falconer)

Life, People, World, Making love

“Missing the Battle of Midway has been the greatest disappointment of my career, but I am going back to the Pacific where I intend personally to have a crack at those yellow bellied sons of bitches and their carriers.”

William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (1882–1959) United States admiral

Speech at the Naval Academy, as quoted in James C. Bradford, Quarterdeck and Bridge: Two Centuries of American Naval Leaders (1997), p. 350.

Disappointment, Personality, Bitch

“When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as a special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rules agreed upon by the group. He is regarded as an outsider.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

But the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may not regard those who judge him as either competent or legitimately entitled to do so. Hence, a second meaning of the term emerges: the rule-breaker may feel his judges are outsiders.
Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), pp. 1-2.

Personality

“How do I describe the Rajinikanth I know? I would say he is, at the bottom of it all, human. That is the best adjective I have. It is this quality of humanness that stands out. He acts in front of the camera… never behind it. In the sense, he is a natural, unaffected person in real life. He is open, frank, very forthright, very loyal to his friends and family. A great human being.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Rajini acts in front of the camera, never behind it' (22 December 1999)

Life, Family, Nature, Sense

“In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.”
"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 76 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Understanding, Personality

“The President called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke … because he wanted to offer his support to her. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate, personal attacks, and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy. And it was a very good conversation.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

About, The White House, White House Press Secretary

Law, Disappointment, Exercises, Support

“Gossip and reputation make sure that what comes around - a person who is cruel will find that the others are cruel hack to him, and a person who is kind will find others are kind in return. Gossip paired with reciprocity allow karma to work here on earth, not in the next life. As long as everyone plays tit-for-tat augmented by gratitude, vengeance, and gossip, the whole system should work beautifully.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2005), p. 55.

Life, Making love, Personality, Gratitude

“In the end each man experiences only himself. To refer to your neighbour or twenty million of them for your touchstone of reality is a logical nonsense in the life of the individual person. When one reflects on the personality of Lautrec in these pictures, brave, unconcerned, scornful, and violent, it becomes a monstrosity of sophism to consider his size or shape as relevant factors. The painter celebrates life where he finds it. His morality is the morality of enjoyment, of the continuous development of his own taste without shame or fear. It is a sort of heroism.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life, Fear, Reality, Personality

“Luiza (his oldest daughter) expressed this option in college. At the time, talked with her and school counselors. It was important to let the choice be hers and that any pressure was accompanied by homophobic colleagues. Fortunately, there was no question about their most serious option. That, remember, is personal.”

Marcelo Tas (1959) Brazilian actor

In a news magazine Alfa, talks about his daughter being gay. Vote em mim, Ronaldo Bressane, September 12, 2010, Alfa, Portuguese http://web.archive.org/web/20101006030234/http://revistaalfa.abril.com.br/cultura-e-sociedade/cultura-entretenimento/vote-em-mim/,

School, Question, Time, Personality

“Our goals are the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources. We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Jimmy Carter welcoming Ceaușescu (April 1978). [Muravchik, Joshua, Our Worst Ex-President, Commentary magazine., February 2007, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10824&page=2]
About Ceaușescu

People, World, Peace, Nature

“A highly competent Bitch often deprecates herself by refusing to recognize her own superiority…. Bitches are among the most unsung of the unsung heroes of this society. They are the pioneers, the vanguard, the spearhead. Whether they want to be or not this is the role they serve just by their very being. Many would not choose to be the groundbreakers for the mass of women for whom they have no sisterly feelings but they cannot avoid it. Those who violate the limits, extend them; or cause the system to break…. Their major psychological oppression is not a belief that they are inferior but a belief that they are not…. Like most women they were taught to hate themselves as well as all women. In different ways and for different reasons perhaps, but the effect was similar. Internalization of a derogatory self-concept always results in a good deal of bitterness and resentment. This anger is usually either turned in on the self —making one an unpleasant person or on other women — reinforcing the social cliches about them. Only with political consciousness is it directed at the source — the social system…. We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever.”

Jo Freeman (1945) writer, lawyer

The BITCH Manifesto (Fall, 1968, © 1969) http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/bitch.htm, as accessed Aug. 22, 2010 (also published as Joreen, The Bitch Manifesto, in Notes From the Second Year (N.Y.: Shulamith Firestone & Anne Koedt, 1970))

Women, Hate, Making love, Beauty

“If regular visits with prostitutes kept the political class from launching trillion-dollar war- and welfare programs, and financing Fanny, Freddy and the Fed—I would personally contribute to a prostitution fund for Washington whores. The prostitutes would be the patriots.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Uncle Sam turns tricks (& stiffs sex workers),” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=650 RT, May 11, 2012. 2010s, 2012

War, Whore, Personality

“When we vest our personal opinions with the trappings of religion, we make religion the servant of our politics.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 213
Faith and Politics (2006)

Making love, Religion, Personality

“Her voice is surprisingly rich for a girl in her early teens, and she has more personality than many pop starlets her age, especially those in the Disney stable.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Heather Phares of allmusic http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kzdgyl5nxp9b

Age, Girl, Personality

“He’s total team player - it’s not about him, and you can’t say enough about him as a person aside from his athletic abilities. But it’s the person in him, it’s the intangibles within him that make him the back that he is. There are other guys who are just as explosive and just as fast, but it’s the things inside of him that make him special.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

MSU head coach Mark Dantonio, quoted at Ringer 23.com (undated)

Making love, Guy, Personality

“The greatest foreign minister in Canadian history except for Lester Pearson…the person who tried first of all to get rid of the deficit…the credit for the fight in trying to get rid of the deficit belongs to Joe Clark and John Crosbie, and yet they are scorned.”

Joe Clark (1939) 16th Prime Minister of Canada

Brian Mulroney, PC Leadership Convention, May 30, 2003

History, Fight, Personality

“If we designate as intelligence, quantitatively, the total of mental functioning, it is evident that the suppression of verbal thought involves a defect, relatively very important among cultivated individuals leading a complex social life: the uneducated person from this point of view is a defective.”

Henri Piéron (1881–1964) French psychologist

Le cerveau et la pensée [Thought and the Brain] (1923)

Life, Intelligence, Personality

“These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was O. K. because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Life, Women, Question, Learning

“The danger, I suppose, of using pseudonyms is that it interferes with that desirable process—the unification of the personality. Goethe said that even the writing of plays, dividing the imagination up among different fictional personalities, damaged what he valued — the mind’s wholeness. I wonder what he meant exactly, since he also described his mode of thinking as imagined conversations with various people. Maybe the pseudonyms, like other personalities conjured up in a dramatic work, can be a preliminary stage of identifying and exploring new parts of yourself. Then the next stage would be to incorporate them in the unifying process. Accept responsibility for them. Maybe that’s what Yeats meant by seeking his opposite. The great Sufi master Ibn el-Arabi described the essential method of spiritual advancement as an inner conversation with the personalities that seem to exist beyond what you regard as your own limits... getting those personalities to tell you what you did not know, or what you could not easily conceive of within your habitual limits. This is commonplace in some therapies, of course.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

People, Imagination, Thinking, Parting

“A gross but deflated old man, of cringing manners, inarticulate in speech and with the hygiene habits of a pig, and could not conceive how a man so utterly devoid of self respect could ever have been selected as a personal physician by anyone who had even a limited possibility of choice.”

Theodor Morell (1886–1948) Personal physician to Adolf Hitler

Hugh Trevor-Roper interviewed Morell in 1945.

Personality, Self-confidence

“Field Marshal Model was a bold, inexhaustible soldier, who knew the front well and who won the confidence of his men by his habitual disregard for his personal safety. He had no time for lazy or incompetent subordinates. He carried out his intentions in a most determined fashion. He was the best possible man to perform the fantastically difficult task of reconstructing a line in centre of the Eastern Front.”

Walter Model (1891–1945) German field marshal

"Panzer Leader" - by Heinz Guderian - 1952

Men, Confidence, Fashion, Time

“What hurts me the most, personally, is that I still promoted him to field marshal. I wanted to give him this final satisfaction… a man like that besmirches the heroism of so many others at the last moment. He could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow.”

Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957) German general

Adolf Hitler, about Paulus surrendering instead of committing suicide.

Hurt, Personality

“The glorious years of discovery in radio astronomy in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge were dominated by the personality of Martin Ryle.”

Martin Ryle (1918–1984) English radio astronomer

Geoffrey Burbidge http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114263939/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0.

Personality

“Need one comment on that fool? He is not a foreign minister but a blind adherent of Hitler. He is also personally disagreeable and vain.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Erhard Milch to Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946.

Fools, Personality

“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

Art, Star, Personality

“He (Del Piero) always comes to the training field with a smile for everyone, a comforting word for everyone. This is his greatness: humbleness… he’s a golden person.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Alessio Tacchinardi, DepositFiles.com http://depositfiles.com/en/files/1234/%5BSFIDE%5D-Speciale+Alessandro+Del+Piero_sampy14.avi.html

Smile, Personality, Training

“In my view he’s the best person I’ve met in this sport.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Fabio Cannavaro, Channel4.com http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_italia/oct28h.html

Sport, Personality

“Del Piero is the best player in the history of Italian football. He is a person for who I do not only have a lot of respect, but a lot of affection as well.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Raúl González Blanco, Goal.com http://www.goal.com/en/news/10/italian-football/2014/12/16/7126242/del-piero-the-best-italian-player-ever-says-raul.html

History, Football, Personality

“The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any of those things authentically until we find out who we really are and be that person, inside and out, instead of the person other people want us to be. Usually those other people, if they want us to be something we aren’t, are using us as a laboratory for working out their own identity problems.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

People, Way, Problem, Parting

“You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Graham Greene, quoted in Bandersnatch, 151, July 2011, p. 8

Books, Thinking, Personality

“An outstanding example of of a man who has, through personal qualities and ability built up a prosperous business while retaining high standards of integrity, self respect and fair play.”

Sathi Narain (1919–1989) Fijian politician

Fiji Times, 12 June 1980

Business, Personality, Self-confidence

“We must call attention, among the workers parties or the extremist tendencies within those parties, to the need to undertake an effective ideological action in order to combat the emotional influence of advanced capitalist methods of propaganda. On every occasion, by every hyper-political means, we must publicize desirable alternatives to the spectacle of the capitalist way of life, so as to destroy the bourgeois idea of happiness. At the same time, taking into account the existence, within the various ruling classes, of elements that have always tended (out of boredom and thirst for novelty) toward things that lead to the disappearance of their societies, we should incite the persons who control some of the vast resources that we lack to provide us with the means to carry out our experiments, out of the same motives of potential profit as they do with scientific research.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Our Immediate Tasks
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Life, Happiness, Way, Motivation

“In his actions was a crude trampling of the law and of proper administrative rules, politicization of the public service, and the use of public resources to advance personal and political interests.”

Tzachi Hanegbi (1957) Israeli politician

Israeli State Comptroller and judge Eliezer Goldberg on Tzachi Hanegbi in his annual report, published September 24, 2004.

Law, Personality

“She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mariam, p. 370
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Love, Bad luck, World, Making love

“He has surprised us all, Maybe he is a bionic man. He recovers very quickly. Maybe he will be on the bench or even start, but we haven’t decided yet. Each injury depends on the person and he is very strong, not just mentally but also physically.”

John Terry (1980) English association football player

Avram Grant, http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2008/0216/sport/grant-hails-terrys-powers-of-recovery-55424.html

Strong, Dependency, Personality

“Romain Rolland: His journey to England was a triumphal progress… During his six months’ stay he addressed seventy meetings of 40,000 persons and fascinated his audiences by the simplicity of his English and his musical voice.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

The Life of Ramakrishna by Romain Rolland, translated by E.F. Malcolm-Smith, Advaita Ashrama.

Music, Personality

“The capacity for personal freedom is a rare talent. Talent exists to be used.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them--but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey."
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Freedom, Personality

“When you call somebody a fraud, that suggests the person knows she is lying. I don’t think Vandana Shiva necessarily knows that. But she is blinded by her ideology and her political beliefs. That is why she is so effective and so dangerous.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Mark Lynas, journalist and environmental activist, as quoted in " Seeds of Doubt http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt" by Michael Specter, The New Yorker (25 August 2014)

Lying, Fraud, Thinking, Personality

“I really enjoy watching Zinedine Zidane. His elegance of movement on the pitch and his skills are uncanny. Apart from being an impressive player, he is also very humble and very likeable as a person. A great man.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Rivaldo, former Brazilian footballer currently playing for Bunyodkor.( Source http://www.uefa.com/magazine/news/Kind=16/newsId=395064.html).

Personality

“The studio is stunned and devastated by this tragic news. The entertainment community has lost an enormous talent. Heath was a brilliant actor and an exceptional person. Our hearts go out to his family.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros., and Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros. studio president. [In Quotes: Heath Ledger Tributes", http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7204267.stm, BBC News, Entertainment, bbc.co.uk (BBC), January 23, 2008, 2008-08-23]

Family, Communication, Heart, Personality

“A great many individuals ever since the rise of the mathematical method, have, each for himself, attacked its direct and indirect consequences. …I shall call each of these persons a paradoxer, and his system a paradox.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

I use the word in the old sense: ...something which is apart from general opinion, either in subject-matter, method, or conclusion. ...Thus in the sixteenth century many spoke of the earth's motion as the paradox of Copernicus, who held the ingenuity of that theory in very high esteem, and some, I think, who even inclined towards it. In the seventeenth century, the depravation of meaning took place... Phillips says paradox is "a thing which seemeth strange"—here is the old meaning...—"and absurd, and is contrary to common opinion," which is an addition due to his own time.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)

Mathematics, Personality

“But full emotional and intellectual belief never came. Perhaps if I had caught my first sense of life from the church I would have been moved to complete acceptance, but the hymns and sermons of God came into my heart only long after my personality had been shaped and formed by uncharted conditions of life. I felt that I had in me a sense of living as deep as that which the church was trying to give me, and in the end I remained basically unaffected.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Life, God, Sense, Heart

“He had this enormous gift of being self-possessed - friendly, approachable, very personable and he got on with people. I thought he was the one who would represent us best abroad, and he did.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Lee Kuan Yew, in an interview with Channel NewsAsia in 2005. http://viweb.freehosting.net/SRajaratnam.htm

People, Personality, Self-confidence

“If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don’t want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers — those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers — depress us. Listening to them — and they are often more audible than the sound track — as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it’s not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn’t enough. If we’ve grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Life, Pleasure, Making love, Art

“I don’t need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost’s observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet to a hillside; and he has observed his own nature, one person’s random or consequential chains of thoughts and feelings and perceptions, quite as well.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

And this person, in the poems, is not the “alienated artist” cut off from everybody who isn’t, yum-yum, another alienated artist; he is someone like normal people only more so — a normal person in the less common and more important sense of normal.
“The Other Frost”, p. 29
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Feeling, Nature, Personality

“We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I’d seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be made geniuses waiting to take over everything.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

Law, Dogs, Color, Waiting

“I have been thinking of what you say about form... I feel that a real living form is the natural result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown.... and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he want to put it down - clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand... Making the unknown known.... if you stop to think of form as form you are lost.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Quote in a letter to Sherwood Anderson, October 1923; as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, Roxana Robinson, University Press of New England, 1999
1917 - 1929

Making love, Feeling, Understanding, Nature

“Ki tests are not founded on the idea of testing for strength or weakness. The most important factor in ki testing is to accurately inform the person of the state of his or her mind. Thus, the person performing ki tests must truly understand and exhibit oneness of mind and body from the outset and then perform the tests correctly.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

22 : The treasure of ki testing
Ki Sayings (2003)

Idea, Understanding, Personality

“I think I’ve gone through quite an ordinary series of steps in life. I began as most children began, with God and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny all being about the same thing. Then I went through the things that I think sensitive people go through, wrestling with the thoughts of Jesus—did he shit? Did he screw? I began to dare to believe that God wasn’t some white beard. I began to look upon the miseries of the human race and to think God was not as simple as my mother said. As nearly as I can concentrate on the question today, I believe I am God; certainly you are, I think we intelligent beings on this planet are all a piece of God, are becoming God. In some sort of cyclical non-time thing we have to become God, so that we can end up creating ourselves, so that we can be in the first place. … My own feeling is that relation to God as a person is a petty, superstitious approach to the All, the infinite.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

As quoted in God & (1975) by Terrance A. Sweeney

Life, God, Children, People

“Since her appointment as a Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina has more than fulfilled my expectations. She has proven to be a close partner and a genuine colleague in our efforts to find solutions for the world’s refugees. Above all, she has helped to make the tragedy of refugees real to everyone who will listen. Angelina’s interest in helping refugees, her personal generosity, and her truly compassionate spirit are an inspiration to us all.”

Angelina Jolie book Notes from My Travels

Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Notes from My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador, Foreward (2006)

World, Making love, Effort, Help

“I have this theory about smart people. If you’re smart, you’re either the only person in your family who’s smart, or everybody in the family is smart. No in-between.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

I considered this. “I think I come from the everybody’s smart category. But they don’t apply their smarts to… larger picture pursuits. That includes me.”
JPod (2006)

People, Family, Personality

“Today this young woman -The Garbo as she is known - is the most glamorous figure in the whole world; there is no one with a more magnetic, romantic or exotic personality, there never has been a film star with so wide an appeal… Greta Garbo is Queen of Hollywood, her salary is fabulous, her word law. She has pointed features in a round face, her mouth is wide and knife-like. Her teeth are large and square and like evenly matched pearls; her eyes are pale, with lashes so long that when she lowers her lids they strike her cheeks; her complexion is of an unearthly whiteness and so delicate that she looks to have one layer of skin less than other people, and the suspicion of a frown is sooner perceptible.”

Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress

Cecil Beaton, Book of Beauty (1930) Source: http://www.garboforever.com/Beatons_Book_of_Beauty.htm

People, World, Law, Star

“His death signified the passing of a certain approach. He was the last person who had the totally un-inhibited joy of driving a racing car.”

Gilles Villeneuve (1950–1982) Canadian racecar driver

Alan Henry, motorsport journalist and friend of Villeneuve - Donaldson, pp. 316-317

Death, Cars, Joy, Personality

“I desire to direct your attention to the fact that citizens of the United States, or persons claiming to be citizens of the United States, are large holders in foreign lands of this species of property, forbidden by the fundamental law of their alleged country. I recommend to Congress to provide by stringent legislation a suitable remedy against the holding, owning or dealing in slaves, or being interested in slave property, in foreign lands, either as owners, hirers, or mortgagors, by citizens of the United States.”

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

1870s, Third State of the Union Address (1871)

Law, Personality, Country

“I have written and spoken and joked with friends the meanest, cruelest, most hateful things that could ever been said by me, have been said about the Clintons. I loathe them. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on just about everything there is to disagree with a person about. If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I will put a Hillary Clinton sticker on my fucking car.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)

Hate, Cars, Personality

“It is not easy to write of my good friend, John Muir. The impression of his personality was so strong on those who knew him that all words seem cheap beside it. Those who never knew him can never, through any word of ours, be brought to realize what they have missed. … He had a quaint, crisp way of talking, his literary style in fact, and none of the nature lovers, the men who know how to feel in the presence of great things and beautiful, have expressed their craft better than he.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

David Starr Jordan, first President of Stanford University (page 8)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Men, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“Elizabeth Duke is possibly the only person on the FBI list wanted for communism.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

What a bitch! Duke was a member of the extremist group, May 19th Communist Organization, whose objective was the violent overthrow of the US. The group was largely active from 1978 to 1985, at which time they got busted and thrown in jail where their new objective became to prevent any violent uprisings in their ass. She's the only one still around. It's not really a group anymore if it's just you, dipshit! America wins."
The Best Page in the Universe

Communication, Personality

“His message is one of hope and peace, and he has inspired millions throughout the world. As an educator, the opportunity to learn has been central and the focus of my life. I have witnessed brilliant teachers and eager students turn classrooms into magical places. Prem Rawat reminds us that magic begins with people, and it’s within each person. That the possibility of peace and the possibility of living a life to the fullest begins with recognizing the value of life itself. That is, in my opinion, the deepest learning and is certainly a curriculum for everyone.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Dr. Eduardo Padron, President of w:Miami Dade College (June 16, 2005)
About, 2000s

Life, People, World, Education

“Throughout time, leading thinkers, academicians, and government leaders have attempted to develop an understanding of how to build peace. Many approaches have been explored, all attempting to create favorable conditions for peace. These solutions have drawn from economics, history, international law, comparative peace studies, conflict resolution, political science, sociology, anthropology, and more. Prem Rawat’s message of peace is rooted in the need for each person to find peace within themselves. He emphasizes that whether our search is for world peace or for personal peace, we very much need to look at the search for peace as a personal quest, rooted in an understanding of who we are.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Professor Dr. Surapon Nitikraipot, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Rector of Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, May 17 2005
About, 2000s

World, Peace, Law, History

“Many people in this world speak of peace from different angles. Some speak of peace as a result of good socio-economic policies, or as a result of a sound distribution of wealth. Prem speaks of peace from a perspective that is both original and intriguing. Rather than to look only to institutions or to policies for creating peace, he speaks of a peace that, he says, each person is personally responsible for finding. Despite ever-growing audiences, his message remains directed at each individual who comes to hear him and the people who enjoy his message come from all walks of life.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Dr. Pages, Chief Executive Officer Universal Forum of Cultures, Barcelona, Spain. June 14, 2004
About, 2000s

Life, People, World, Peace

“And for the authentical truth of either person or actions, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth?”

George Chapman The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions; material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy.
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613)

Truth, Personality

“There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience... that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, Sadness, Making love, Home

“Grace worketh with Mercy, and specially in two properties, as it was shewed: which working belongeth to the Third Person, the Holy Ghost. He worketh rewarding and giving.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 58

Personality

“Whenever you hear the words chink, nigger, beaner, paki, sissy, bull dyke, faggot, cunt, bitch, ho, jap…because through no fault of your own, you happen to be you, and apparently to the person saying it something is wrong with that.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Personality, Bitch

“Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies - my only talent - smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall - on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Men, God, People, Fear

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

From the Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass

Love, Life, Men, God

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Love, Life, Men, Education

“I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up p. 186

Happiness, Feeling, Nature, Universe

“The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Way, Flowers, Personality

“The influence of Charles Austin over me differed from that of the persons I have hitherto mentioned, in being not the influence of a man over a boy, but that of an elder contemporary. It was through him that I first felt myself, not a pupil under teachers, but a man among men. He was the first person of intellect whom I met on a ground of equality, though as yet much his inferior on that common ground. He was a man who never failed to impress greatly those with whom he came in contact, even when their opinions were the very reverse of his. The impression he gave was that of boundless strength, together with talents which, combined with such apparent force of will and character, seemed capable of dominating the world. Those who knew him, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he would play a conspicuous part in public life. It is seldom that men produce so great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He loved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is the greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he astonished any one by their audacity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/77/mode/1up pp. 77-78

Love, Life, Men, World

“He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/49/mode/1up pp. 49-50

Bad luck, Feeling, Motivation, Evil

“He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/48/mode/1up p. 48

Life, Youth, Education, Personality

“I consequently remained long, and in a less degree have always remained, inexpert in anything requiring manual dexterity; my mind as well as my hands, did its work very lamely when it was applied, or ought to have been applied, to the practical details which, as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men, are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they have, chiefly shows itself: I was constantly meriting reproof by inattention, inobservance, and general slackness of mind in matters of daily life. My father was the extreme opposite in these particulars: his senses and mental faculties were always on the alert; he carried decision and energy of character in his whole manner and into every action of life: and this, as much as his talents, contributed to the strong impression which he always made upon those with whom he came into personal contact. But the children of energetic parents, frequently grow up unenergetic, because they lean on their parents, and the parents are energetic for them.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/36/mode/1up pp. 36–37

Life, Men, Children, Parent

“My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did not estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated in me the usual respect for them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/33/mode/1up pp. 33–34

Bad luck, Age, Confidence, Study

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog Disputed

People, Search, Time, Personality