Quotes about role

A collection of quotes on the topic of role, play, people, doing.

Quotes about role

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Jane Goodall photo
Jane Goodall photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky photo

“What I need is to believe in myself again— for my faith has been greatly undermined; it seems to me my role is over.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) Russian composer

Letter to a nephew (9 February 1893) Just prior to composing his "Pathetique" Symphony (No. 6)

Jim Morrison photo
Murray N. Rothbard photo
Marilyn Manson photo
John Wooden photo

“Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating… too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Jane Goodall photo

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

With Love (1999)

James Baldwin photo
Oprah Winfrey photo
Stanislav Grof photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Jim Morrison photo
Osamu Dazai photo
Joseph Louis Lagrange photo
Jack Welch photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Monica Bellucci photo
Selena photo

“As, not only as an entertainer but as a person who who cared a lot and I gave the best that I could and I tried to be the best role model that I possibly could and the best person I could I tried to help.”

Selena (1971–1995) Mexican-American singer, songwriter, actress, and fashion designer

Selena reflecting on how she wanted to be remembered. Selena Interview Lubbock, Texas 1994 (Restored) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAooXSxDqVU

Shahrukh Khan photo

“I don't sit around complaining about the lack of good roles. I will play Raj 85 times and still make him different.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Malavika Sangghvi

Aga Khan IV photo
Dwayne Johnson photo

“The Rock: And I quote: You know your damn role and Shut Your Damn Mouth!”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Michael Parenti photo
Immanuel Wallerstein photo

“And in the present we are all irremediably the products of our background, our training, our personality and social role, and the structured pressures within which we operate.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The modern world system capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.

Shahrukh Khan photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

A Theory of Roughness (2004)
Context: My book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, reproduced Hokusai's print of the Great Wave, the famous picture with Mt. Fuji in the background, and also mentioned other unrecognized examples of fractality in art and engineering. Initially, I viewed them as amusing but not essential. But I changed my mind as innumerable readers made me aware of something strange. They made me look around and recognize fractals in the works of artists since time immemorial. I now collect such works. An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.

Jacque Fresco photo

“You can play a role in the shaping of tomorrow’s world by asking yourself questions like, “What kind of world do I want to live in?” and “What does democracy mean to me?””

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 6-7

Simon Sinek photo

“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Queen Latifah photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Jimmy Carter photo
John Lennon photo
Novalis photo

“Humanity is a comic role.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings

Eckhart Tolle photo
Hayao Miyazaki photo
Chris Hedges photo
Oswald Spengler photo

“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.”

The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)
Context: The press to-day is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.

Elizabeth Gilbert photo

“If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece

“Nowadays, HR professionals play three roles: • Storyteller • Strategy interpreter • Strategic facilitator”

Dave Ulrich (1953) American academic

Source: HR from the Outside In, 2012, p. 92

Barack Obama photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo

“In some firms role relationships prescribed by the chart seemed to be of secondary importance to personal relationships between individuals.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Industrial Organization: Theory and practice, 1965, p. 24

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“I've listened to preachers,
I've listened to fools
I've watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
We're pushed and conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you live the role”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Crazy Train, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley.
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Steven Weinberg photo
Rosa Parks photo

“Thank you very much. I honor my late husband Raymond Parks, other Freedom Fighters, men of goodwill who could not be here. I'm also honored by young men who respect me and have invited me as an elder. Raymond, or Parks as I called him, was an activist in the Scottsboro Boys case, voter registration, and a role model for youth. As a self-taught businessman, he provided for his family, and he loved and respected me. Parks would have stood proud and tall to see so many of our men uniting for our common man and committing their lives to a better future for themselves, their families, and this country. Although criticism and controversy has been focused on in the media instead of benefits for the one million men assembling peacefully for spiritual food and direction, it is a success. I pray that my multiracial and international friends will view this [some audio unclear] gathering as an opportunity for all men but primarily men of African heritage to make changes in their lives for the better. I am proud of all groups of people who feel connected with me in any way, and I will always work for human rights for all people. However, as an African American woman, I am proud, applaud, and support our men in this assembly. I would a lot like to have male students of the Pathways to Freedom to join me here and wave their hands, but I don't think they're here right now. But thank you all young men of the Pathways to Freedom. Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Rosa Park speech to social activists assembled in Washington, D.C. ( 1995) http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/2316-rosa-parks-speech-at-the-million-man-march)

Federico Fellini photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ who is the fullness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world and of the United States, look to Christ.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Address to High School Students
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1979/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19791003_ny-madison-square-garden_en.html

Eckhart Tolle photo
Barack Obama photo

“These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

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

Ramadan Message http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-President-Barack-Obama-in-Ramadan-Message Washington, DC (21 August 2009)
2009

Henry Mintzberg photo
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Selena photo

“Anybody can be a role model, anybody can.”

Selena (1971–1995) Mexican-American singer, songwriter, actress, and fashion designer

"Selena Live" Interview (1993)

Henry M. Jackson photo

“The danger of Americans being killed, the danger of divisiveness that would accrue from those developments … are all too real. A superpower should not play that kind of role in a cauldron of trouble, because sooner or later we are going to get hurt.”

Henry M. Jackson (1912–1983) American politician

on Reagan's 1982 decision to send troops to Lebanon) Harrop, Froma. " Dems Need Another Scoop Jackson http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_23_05_FH.html", RealClearPolitics, 11-23-2005.

Thomas Mann photo

“Unhappy German nation, how do you like the Messianic role allotted to you, not by God, nor by destiny, but by a handful of perverted and bloody-minded men?”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

"This War" (1939); also in Order of the Day (1942)

B.K.S. Iyengar photo

“Anything physical is always changing, therefore, its reality is not constant, not eternal. Nature is in this sense like an actor who has only different roles.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 8

Albert Einstein photo
Pope Paul VI photo

“The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.”
HUMANAE VITAE tradendae munus gravissimum, ex quo coniuges liberam et consciam Deo Creatori tribuunt operam, magnis semper ipsos affecit gaudiis, quae tamen aliquando non paucae difficultates et angustiae sunt secutae.

Pope Paul VI (1897–1978) 262nd Pope of the Catholic Church

Official Vatican translation.
HUMANAE VITAE http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_lt.html

Pope Francis photo

“We will also discuss the role of women in the Church. Remember that the Church (la chiesa) is feminine.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

Ken Ham photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Barack Obama photo
Leon Trotsky photo

“In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their own powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who someday will come and accomplish his mission.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Why Marxists oppose Individual Terrorism http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm, article published in the Austrian Social Democratic paper Der Kampf (1909)

Hugo Black photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analgous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Sukirti Kandpal photo
Paul Dirac photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Paul Davies photo

“Matter as such has been demoted from its central role, to be replaced by concepts such as organization, complexity and information.”

Paul Davies (1946) British physicist

Source: The Matter Myth: Towards 21st-century Science (1991), Ch. 1: 'The Death of Materialism', p. 9

Oswald Spengler photo

“p>To the new International that is now in the irreversible process of preparation we can contribute the ideas of worldwide organization and the world state; the English can suggest the idea of worldwide exploitation and trusts; the French can offer nothing….
Thus we find two great economic principles opposed to each other in the modern world. The Viking has become a free-tradesman; the Teutonic knight is now an administrative official. There can be no reconciliation. Each of these principles is proclaimed by a German people, Faustian men par excellence. Neither can accept a restriction of its will, and neither can be satisfied until the whole world has succumbed to its particular idea. This being the case, war will be waged until one side gains final victory. Is world economy to be worldwide exploitation, or worldwide organization? Are the Caesars of the coming empire to be billionaires or universal administrators? Shall the population of the earth, so long as this empire of Faustian civilization holds together, be subjected to cartels and trusts, or to men such as those envisioned in the closing pages of Goethe’s Faust, Part II? Truly, the destiny of the world is at stake….
This brings us to the political aspects of the English-Prussian antithesis. Politics is the highest and most powerful dimension of all historical existence. World history is the history of states; the history of states is the history of wars. Ideas, when they press for decisions, assume the form of political units: countries, peoples, or parties. They must be fought over not with words but with weapons. Economic warfare becomes military warfare between countries or within countries. Religious associations such as Jewry and Islam, Huguenots and Mormons, constitute themselves as countries when it becomes a matter of their continued existence or their success. Everything that proceeds from the innermost soul to become flesh or fleshly creation demands a sacrifice of flesh in return. Ideas that have become blood demand blood. War is the eternal pattern of higher human existence, and countries exist for war’s sake; they are signs of readiness for war. And even if a tired and blood-drained humanity desired to do away with war, like the citizens of the Classical world during its final centuries, like the Indians and Chinese of today, it would merely exchange its role of war-wager for that of the object about and with which others would wage war. Even if a Faustian universal harmony could be attained, masterful types on the order of late Roman, late Chinese, or late Egyptian Caesars would battle each other for this Empire—for the possession of it, if its final form were capitalistic; or for the highest rank in it, if it should become socialistic.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Louise Bourgeois photo
Ronald H. Coase photo
Saul Bellow photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“On his career: "I admit I've done a few lousy roles in the beginning of my career, like my role in Critters 3 (1991). But at that age, you'll do anything for attention!”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

Eric Shinseki photo
Barack Obama photo

“I have been a consistent and strong opponent of this war. I have also tried to act responsibly in that opposition to ensure that, having made the decision to go into Iraq, we provide our troops, who perform valiantly, the support they need to complete their mission. I have also stated publicly that I think we have both strategic interests and humanitarian responsibilities in ensuring that Iraq is as stable as possible under the circumstances. Finally, I said publicly that it is my preference not to micromanage the Commander-in-Chief in the prosecution of war. Ultimately, I do not believe that is the ideal role for Congress to play. But at a certain point, we have to draw a line. At a certain point, the American people have to have some confidence that we are not simply going down this blind alley in perpetuity.
When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried-and-failed policy, opposed by generals and experts, opposed by Democrats and Republicans, opposed by Americans and even the Iraqis themselves. It is time to change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back, and it is time to refocus America's effort on the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.”

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

Floor Statement on President's Decision to Increase Troops in Iraq (19 January 2007)
2007

Leon Trotsky photo
Susan Sontag photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo
Hidetaka Miyazaki photo
Redd Foxx photo

“Music played a large role in the survival of the black people in America — that and a sense of humor that just couldn't be enslaved.”

Redd Foxx (1922–1991) American comedian and actor

The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor (1977) (co-written with Norma Miller)

Georgy Zhukov photo
Cate Blanchett photo
Gabriel Iglesias photo

“The next thing I know, I'm on the set of the movie Magic Mike. The movie is directed by a director named Steven Soderbergh, who's an amazing, amazing director, he's done a lot of great films. And, of course, Channing Tatum's in the movie. In addition, there's an actor by the name of Matthew McConaughey, who's attached to the movie. [Several audience members cheer] I'm a huge fan of Matthew McConaughey, okay? When I found out that I was gonna work with him, I was so excited, you know? People ask me, "Really, you get star-struck?" Hell yeah! I'm a comedian, not an actor. So, I show up, and, immediately, they send me to the makeup trailer that's outside. So, I go into the makeup trailer, I sit down, they start working on my hair, they start putting makeup on me, and in comes Matthew McConaughey, and he sits down on the chair right next to me. And I start freaking out, "Oh, my God, that's Matthew McConaughey!" [Stutters excitedly] And, now, I decide to introduce myself before I did or said something stupid, right? So, I look over to him, and I say, "Excuse me, Mr. McConaughey? How are you doing? My name's Gabriel Iglesias, I'm going to be playing the role of Tobias, the club DJ, and I just wanted to say Hello, and that it's an honor to work with you." And, in my head, I'm thinking, "I hope he's the same guy. I hope he's the same person in the movies, I hope his voice is the same, I hope his accent's the same." And he turns to me, and he says, [Imitating Matthew McConaughey] "All riiight." [Audience cheers] "How you doin' there, big man? You doin' good?" "I'm doing good." "All riiight."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

And, I'm spazzing out. [Gives excited gibberish]
Aloha, Fluffy (2013)

Barack Obama photo
André Breton photo