Quotes about somebody
page 2

“I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Love, Way, Hurt

“If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach
them how to use television.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

“By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Betrayal

“True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Success

“Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Love, Sadness, Sleep

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

God, Pleasure, Dead

“Don't go getting full of yourself becuase once you do, somebody's going to come and let the wind out of your sails”

Sharon G. Flake book The Skin I'm In

Source: The Skin I'm In

“It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.”

Roald Dahl book The Witches

"The Heart of a Mouse"
Source: The Witches (1983)

Love

“Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Source: Suddenly Last Summer

God, Children

“Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Love, Peace, Feeling

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Relationship, Way

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

Kingsley Amis book Lucky Jim

Source: Lucky Jim

“Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood.”

Beverly Cleary (1916) American writer of children's books

Books, Childhood

“The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Girl, Boy, Reading

“He's sensitive and I don't want him to break his heart over somebody who doesn't care about him.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Heart

“I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”

Clarice Lispector book A Breath of Life

Source: A Breath of Life

Life, Death, Madness, Dead

“Music and comedy are so linked. The rhythm of comedy is connected to the rhythm of music. They’re both about creating tension and knowing when to let it go. I’m always surprised when somebody funny is not musical.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

Music

“Love is not liking somebody. Anyone can do that. Love is loving things that sometimes you don't like.”

Ajahn Brahm (1951) Buddhist monk

Love

“My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?"
"I don't mind at all" I said.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.”

Roald Dahl book The Witches

Source: The Witches

Love, Life

“The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

“The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

People, World

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

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

Source: Essays of Three Decades (1942)

People

“You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”

Tove Jansson book Tales from Moominvalley

Source: Tales from Moominvalley

“When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Love, Life, God, Learning

“The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss.”

Wilbur Smith book Golden Fox

Source: Golden Fox

Color, Kiss

“I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

Love, World, Imagination, Memory

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Relationship, Romantic, Wedding, For Him

“My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Thinking, Change, Time

“Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing, as they played outside. My stomach coiled whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to somebody else, knowing it wasn't for me.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Hate, Children, Food, Soul

“It’s not unusual for us to receive an email from somebody saying, “I spend all of my time on your website and now I have less of a social life than I had before.” We would much rather have people meet people through the website and go out and party than stay at home on a Friday night reading other people’s profiles. And it’s surprising, but we have actually received far less complaints about stalking than we otherwise would have expected.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Life, People, Home, Time

“[[S]ex] is often a hostile act, often an exercise of power over somebody else.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Norah Vincent, Sex, Love and Politics, id., p. 40, col. 1.

Hostility, Exercises

“I knew it had the potential to be something special right away. It was like meeting somebody that I've just known where you just recognize one another. It was so disproportionate, the level of emotion we were experiencing to the time we had spent together.”

Demi Moore (1962) American actress

On first meeting Ashton Kutcher Demi Moore Cover Interview - Demi Moore on Fame and Family - Harper's BAZAAR August 3, 2010 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/cover/demi-moore-cover-interview-0410

Time

“I can’t sleep. There’s always somebody not getting treatment. I can’t stand that.”

Paul Farmer (1959) American anthropologist

quoted on page 24.
Mountains Beyond Mountains

Sleep

“Man’s freedom is lacking if somebody else controls what he needs, for need may result in man’s enslavement of man.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975)
The Green Book (1975)

Freedom

“When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable or painful experience, you are aware of that experience. These seem to be true and obvious statements. Yet if you look at them very closely, you will find that in a subtle way their very structure contains a fundamental illusion, an illusion which is unavoidable when you use language. Thought and language create an apparent duality and a separate person where there is none.
The truth is you are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, feeling or experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things appear. As you go about your life, can you be aware of yourself as the awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Life, Pain, Pleasure, Truth

“And what do I want people to get from the music? Whatever they want. Whatever you like. Somebody asked me what I wanted to do. I just said I wanted to…just to give back to it what it’s given me. And to meet all the other people that are doing it…just to be in the world, really.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

From Grace EPK (Electronic Press Kit)

People, World, Music

“I'm known as a survivor now, I hope so, for the jail thing, bullets and everything, controversies and everything, I hope so. And I want to be in the future known as somebody. You know I want people to be talking about me like you know: "remember when he was real bad, remember when Tupac was real bad". You know what I mean, they do that about a lot of actors now, like John Travolta I read stories like "remember you were wild". And all these other people, and now they're like sweet hearts. We all should get that chance, I just want my chance.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, MTV interview with Tabitha Soren (1995)

People, Hope, Chance, Reading

“You've got to know who you are before you step into this business, because if you're trying to find it, you'll probably wind up being somebody else, that you probably don't even like.”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPItgCnamNg

Business

“I got shot. I always felt like I'd be shot. Somebody was trying to do me some harm because a lot of people don't like me. But I didn't think it was gonna happen at that particular moment.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

People, Thinking

“There are some who might say that somebody named Barack Obama can’t be elected senator in the state of Illinois. They’re probably the same folks who said that a guy named Rod Blagojevich couldn’t be elected governor of the state of Illinois.”

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

On a campaign trail. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2009/Chicago-Straight/index.php?cparticle=2&siarticle=1#artanc 2004

Guy

“But what’s also true is that each of us have to cultivate an attitude of tolerance and mutual respect. And for young people, we have to try to encourage each other to be tolerant and respectful. So in the United States, obviously one of the biggest problems historically has been the issue of racial discrimination. And part of our efforts to overcome racial discrimination involve passing laws like the Civil Rights Law and the Voting Rights Law, and that required marches and protests and Dr. King. But part of the effort was also people changing the hearts and minds, and realizing that just because somebody doesn’t look like me doesn’t mean that they’re not worthy of respect. And when you’re growing up and you saw a friend of yours call somebody by a derogatory name, a rude name because they were different, it’s your job to say to that person, actually, that’s not the right way to think. If you are Christian and you have a friend who says I hate Muslims, then it’s up to you to say to that friend, you know what, I don’t believe in that; I think that’s the wrong attitude, I think we have to be respectful of the Muslim population. If you’re Buddhist and you say -- you hear somebody in your group say I want to treat a Hindu differently, it’s your job to speak out. So the most important thing I think is for you to, in whatever circle of influence you have, speak out on behalf of tolerance and diversity and respect. If you are quiet, then the people who are intolerant, they’ll own the stage and they’ll set the terms of the debate. And one of the things that leadership requires is saying things even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s unpopular -- especially when it’s unpopular. So I hope that as you get more influence, you’ll continue to speak out on behalf of these values.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

Hate, People, Law, Hope

“Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. …If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Introduction, Tr. Montgomery Furth (1964)
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

Truth, Law, Understanding, Nature

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

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

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Faith, Way

“TS (Tourette's Syndrome) has really taught me a lesson about judging people who are different. Now when I see somebody do or say something I don't understand, I try to look beyound appearances and ask myself what makes that person tick — no pun intended. Think about it: When you keep an open mind about things that seem unusual or strange, all sorts of new understanding come to you. The world gets bigger, and so do you.”

Neve Campbell (1973) Canadian actress

Celebrity Diary, Teen People Magazine, April 2000

People, World, Understanding, Thinking

“Bob Dole seems to me to be a classic example of somebody who had no reason to run. You're 73 years old, you're already the third-most-powerful man in the country. So why? He seems to be drawn by some psychological compulsion. And it's too bad because in a lot of ways, he's an admirable person. There's a great story there. And Bill Clinton? Well, his campaign's fascinating to a student of politics. It's disturbing to someone who cares about certain issues. But politically, it seems to be working.”

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

As quoted in "A Newcomer to the Business of Politics has Seen Enough to Reach Some Conclusions About Restoring Voters' Trust", by Joe Frolik, inThe Plain Dealer (3 August 1996)
1990s

Way, Personality, Country

“Knowledge is not something which exists and grows in the abstract. It is a function of human organisms and of social organization. Knowledge, that is to say, is always what somebody knows: the most perfect transcript of knowledge in writing is not knowledge if nobody knows it. Knowledge however grows by the receipt of meaningful information - that is, by the intake of messages by a knower which are capable of reorganising his knowledge.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, General Systems Theory - The Skeleton of Science, 1956, p. 197

Knowledge, Perfection

“I don't know where my expertise is; my expertise is no disciplines. I would recommend to drop disciplinarity wherever one can. Disciplines are an outgrowth of academia. In academia you appoint somebody and then in order to give him a name he must be a historian, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, a biophysicist; he has to have a name. Here is a human being: Joe Smith -- he suddenly has a label around the neck: biophysicist. Now he has to live up to that label and push away everything that is not biophysics; otherwise people will doubt that he is a biophysicist. If he's talking to somebody about astronomy, they will say "I don't know, you are not talking about your area of competence, you're talking about astronomy, and there is the department of astronomy, those are the people over there," and things of that sort. Disciplines are an aftereffect of the institutional situation.”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Von Foerster (1995) " Interview Heinz von Foerster http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/interviewvonf.html" S. Franchi, G. Güzeldere, and E. Minch (eds) in: Constructions of the Mind Volume 4, issue 2. 26 June 1995 1990s

People

“You hit somebody with your fist and not with your fingers spread.”

Heinz Guderian (1888–1954) German general

Man schlägt jemanden mit der Faust und nicht mit gespreizten Fingern.
As quoted in Die Deutschen gepanzerten Truppen bis 1945 (1965) by Oskar Munzel, p. 209; this indicated the need to concentrate tank forces for one strong push in one direction and not distribute them over a large area.

“This is my life. No one has the right to tell me how to live it or to question what I do. When you grow up, you will make your own choices. It will be your life and you it your way. I will never interfere. It must be awful for these people to have such boring lives that all they can do make them interesting is to talk about somebody else’s life. I am glad I provided with them with timepass conversation.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

In reply to her daughter when she had streaked and her daughter who was five years old was upset knowing about to in the school when she was told that her mother :’All the children in my school say that their mummies said that you ran nanga’ (‘nanga’ in Hindi means “naked”) in "Timepass" pp. viii-ix

Life, People, Way, Question

“You should look at your reflection
If you wanna see a lie
You're heading in the right direction
If you wanna pick a side
Give me more perfection if you wanna see me cry
Oh if you wanna love somebody
I'm your guy”

Tom Odell (1990) British singer-songwriter

If You Wanna Love Somebody
Lyrics, Jubilee Road

Love, Lie, Guy, Perfection

“I love tea. Mmmm. I know I'm getting old because I'm startin' get excited about tea. Just sitting in the loungeroom bored ya no. Somebody goes "You want a cup of tea?" and I go "Oar he hor." Start feeling a little bit depressed when it gets to the bottom, I think to myself I'll just make myself another cup, I can feel happy again.”

Carl Barron (1964) Australian comedian

Carl Barron Live (2003)

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Tea

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

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

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Children, Fear, Faith, Hope

“Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

First Tweet on Twitter, February 24, 2010 Twitter http://twitter.com/conanobrien The Tonight Show

Help

“I have left off crying, and giggling as well. Now make up your mind. I don't care anything for all this talk. You told me what your price for the job was and I have come up with it. Here is the money. I aim to get Tom Chaney and if you are not game I will find somebody who is game. All I have heard out of you so far is talk. I know you can drink whiskey and I have seen you kill a gray rat. All the rest has been talk. They told me you had grit and that is why I came to you. I am not paying for talk. I can get all the talk I need and more at the Monarch boardinghouse.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 5, pp. 82-83 : 'Mattie Ross' to 'Rooster Cogburn'

Money, Game, Drink, Cry

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art, Cry

“All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, "You're no good." That's all we get told all our lives. "You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler." It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, "Yeah, you're a great artist," I would have been a more secure person.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 9

Life, Guy, Drawing, Personality

“I thought it would be interesting if I came back to television to play somebody somewhat dark. What's bizarre is that we're shooting seven feet from the 'Friends' stage. I know how long it takes to get here from my house.”

Matthew Perry (actor) (1969) American actor

Marc Peyser (September 4, 2006) "Falling for Fall: What's Cool and Coming Your Way: Summer's ending. Get over it. Here's a look at the riches of autumn. First up, 'West Wing' creator Aaron Sorkin rides again with the terrific TV drama 'Studio 60.'", Newsweek, Newsweek Inc., p. 54.

Housing

“When you’re a teenager and in your early twenties it seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we’re convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It’s a fallacy, of course, but it’s a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it’s called hope.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "I've always felt like an exile" by Andrew Billen in The Times (30th May 2006)
In interviews etc., About love

Pain, Religion, Hope, Light

“There were times where I was in the Oval Office and people would come to me with all kinds of political problems and policy problems and international problems, and my team would be getting discouraged and depressed, and I would say to them, I have to be optimistic, because the odds of somebody named Barack Obama being President of the United States were very low, and the fact that, in my lifetime, I have seen such enormous, positive change in the United States and around the world tells me that, although history does not travel in a straight line, it moves in the direction of justice and freedom and a better life for people. But we have to fight for it. We have to work for it.”

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

2016, News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany (November 2016)

Life, People, World, Justice

“There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, […] And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

L.A. Times 5/1/94, "He Didn't Ask for All This".

Night

“Do you think you are protecting somebody by taking away seven words?”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Crossfire debate on censorship (1986)

Thinking

“These television shows that have 14 shots of somebody looking at each other with the wind blowing through their hair drive me insane.”

Amy Sherman-Palladino (1966) American television writer, director, and producer

NYTimes.com, "Job Title: The 'Gilmore' Noodge" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/arts/television/23heff.html?ex=1121313600&en=6a20ddae804ec0a8&ei=5070&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1106535613-AH4C904DjoUiEAdysK3Zow&oref=login.

“But for those folks who have lost their job right now because a plant went down the Mexico, that isn't going to make you feel better. And so what we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are coming in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back, and when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I'm not going to advertise for, that he's going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There's — there's no answer to it. He just says, "Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal." Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn't have an answer.”

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

Questions for President Obama: A Town Hall Special http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/questions-for-president-obama-a-town-hall-special/ with Gwen Ifill, PBS NewsHour (1 June 2016) 2016

Feeling, Past, Personality, Training

“What’s our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future? Why are we pointing to somebody else when we could take the time just to go to the polling places? We give away our power.”

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

2015, Bloody Sunday Speech (March 2015)

Time, Future

“Even in love, people betray themselves. And when you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself. I would say a great part of human history is a history of self-betrayal and betrayal of others.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

" Isaac Bashevis Singer's Universe http://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/03/archives/isaac-bashevis-singers-universe-errors-and-betrayals.html" by Richard Burgin in The New York Times (3 December 1978)

Love, People, History, Betrayal

“So I’m unequivocal on this. If somebody is a law-abiding citizen who is going about their business, and working in a job, an obeying the traffic signs and doing all the other things that good citizens are supposed to do, and not harming anybody -- the idea that they are going to be treated differently or abused because of who they love is wrong. Full stop. And the state does not need to weigh in on religious doctrine. The state just has to say we’re going to treat everybody equally under the law. And then everybody else can have their own opinions.”

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

Remarks by President Obama and President Kenyatta of Kenya in a Press Conference at Kenyan State House in Nairobi, Kenya https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-and-president-kenyatta-kenya-press-conference (July 25, 2015) 2015

Love, Law, Idea, Business

“[T]he most important position in a democracy is not the office of the President. The most important office is the office of citizen, because if you have citizens who are informed and know about other countries, and recognize that if we provide foreign aid to some distant country in Africa, that ultimately may make us healthier. And if you have a citizenry that recognizes that even if I have to pay slightly more in taxes — which nobody likes paying taxes -- but if I do, maybe I can provide that young child who lives in a poorer neighborhood an opportunity for a better life. And then because she has a job and a better life, she can pay taxes, and then everybody has more, and the society is better off. If you don't have citizens like that, then you're going to get leaders who think very narrowly and you'll be disappointed. So the job — one thing I always tell young people, don't just think that you elect somebody and then you expect them to solve all your problems and then you just sit back and complain when it doesn't happen. You have to work as a citizen also to provide the leaders the space and the direction to do the right thing. It's just as important for you to challenge ignorance or discrimination or people who are always thinking in terms of war”

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

it's just as important for you to do that as the President because I don't care how good the person, the leader you elect is, if the people want something different. In a democracy, at least, that's what's going to happen.
2016, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall (March 2016)

Life, War, People, Disappointment

“If Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins or any of these compromising Negros who say exactly what the white man wants to hear is interviewed anywhere in the country you don't get anybody to offset what they say. But whenever a black man stands up and says something that white people don't like then the first thing that man does is run around to try and find somebody to say something to offset what has just been said. This is natural but it is done.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

TV Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIX4QMIiOw [date needed], also quoted in Ice Cube: Attitude (2002) by Joel McIver, p. 177

People, Nature, Country

“The U. S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all that we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.
It is my firm belief that the responsible course of action - for the United States, for Iraq, and for our troops - is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy. This policy that I've laid out is consistent with what I have advocated for well over a year, with many of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and with what the American people demanded in the November election.
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, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.
It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back. And it is time to refocus America's efforts on the challenges we face at home and the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.”

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

Floor Statement on Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 (30 January 2007)
2007

War, People, Home, Effort

“Cause when you're fifteen
And somebody tells you they love you,
you're gonna believe them.
And when you're fifteen,
Feeling like there's nothing to figure out,
Well count to ten, take it in.
This is life before you know
Who you're gonna be,
You're fifteen.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Fifteen.
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Love, Life, Feeling

“I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Santorum targets blacks in entitlement reform
2012-01-02
Lucy
Madison
Political Hotsheet
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57350990-503544/santorum-targets-blacks-in-entitlement-reform/
2012-01-19

Money, People

“O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia—what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ And no longer can a tyrant say, ‘God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 215; epigram)

God, Truth, Fools, Soul

“I would like somebody to be hated more than I am.”

Dionysius I of Syracuse (-430–-367 BC) Sicilian tyrant

Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965, p. 11

Hate

“My mother once told me never be a second-rate version of somebody else when you can be a first-rate version of yourself.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

"[G]racefully handl[ing] audience demands for 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,'" as quoted in "Coy Minnelli wows spirited audience; UM announces MCA construction" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LQY1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=QE8KAAAAIBAJ&pg=3215%2C676019 by Alicia Amstead, in The Bangor Daily News (September 18, 2006), p. A10

“The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 51e

Understanding

“We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there's going to be a real appreciation.”

Art Garfunkel (1941) American singer, poet, and actor

http://www.artgarfunkel.info/more.html

Feeling

“Try and find somebody who is lonely. And when you go to see them, they will see you as the messiah. Go and visit a little old lady who has no friends or family. Bring her flowers. People say ‘but that’s nothing.’ It is nothing—but it’s also everything. It always begins with small little things. It all began in Bethlehem. That was pretty small.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

The Gift of Living With the Not Gifted http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gift-of-living-with-the-not-gifted-1428103079 Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015 From interviews and talks

People, Family, Flowers

“The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.”

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

The Discipline Of Transcendence (1978)

Dreams, History, Reading, Past

“Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who I was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, ‘Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!’ and I’d most likely answer, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter?”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Pulp (1994)

“Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Interview on Channel 4 (1 June 1983) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFjZOeL10MA&NR

“Oh, yes … I'm really frightfully human and love all mankind, and all that sort of thing. Mankind is truly amusing, when kept at the proper distance. And common men, if well-behaved, are really quite useful. One is a cynick only when one thinks. At such times the herd seems a bit disgusting because each member of it is always trying to hurt somebody else, or gloating because somebody else is hurt. Inflicting pain seems to be the chief sport of persons whose tastes and interests run to ordinary events and direct pleasures and rewards of life—the animalistic or (if one may use a term so polluted with homoletick associations) worldly people of our absurd civilisation. ……. I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of anybody. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person—sorry because it gives the herd so much pleasure. … The natural hatefulness and loathsomeness of the human beast may be overcome only in a few specimens of fine heredity and breeding, by a transference of interests to abstract spheres and a consequent sublimation of the universal sadistic fury. All that is good in man is artificial; and even that good is very slight and unstable, since nine out of ten non-primitive people proceed at once to capitalise their asceticism and vent their sadism by a Victorian brutality and scorn towards all those who do not emulate their pose. Puritans are probably more contemptible than primitive beasts, though neither class deserves much respect.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (8 March 1923), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 211-212
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, Men, Pain

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

People, Fear, Home, Drink

“You know, I received an invitation that said "Please come to Ellis Island July 4th for the hundredth birthday celebration of an American institution". Somebody goofed. My birthday is not until February.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

A self-deprecating joke about his age, quoted at American Experience http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/reagan-transcript/ 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Birthday

“People ask me… "What do you still bring from Hawaii? How does it affect your character, how does it affect your politics?" I try to explain to them something about the Aloha Spirit. I try to explain to them this basic idea that we all have obligations to each other, that we're not alone, that if we see somebody who's in need we should help… that we look out for one another, that we deal with each other with courtesy and respect, and most importantly, that when you come from Hawaii, you start understanding that what's on the surface, what people look like — that doesn't determine who they are.
And that the power and strength of diversity, the ability of people from everywhere … whether they're black or white, whether they're Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans or Filipino-Americans or whatever they are, they are just Americans, that all of us can work together and all of us can join together to create a better country.
And it's that spirit, that I'm absolutely convinced, is what America is looking for right now.
Because we've been divided for so long, we've been arguing for so long, a lot of times about things that aren't even worth arguing about, and ignoring the things that we should be doing to make the next generation have a better life — that I think people are hungry for a new politics, they're hungry for change, and that's why I decided to run for President of the United States.”

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

Speech in Keehi Lagoon Beach Park, Hawaii, (8 August 2008) http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=40384154 2008

Life, People, Idea, Understanding

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, Way

“And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid.”

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Life, Women, People, World

“So we can all appreciate our own identities, our bloodlines, our beliefs, our backgrounds -- that tapestry is what makes us who we are. But the history of Africa -- which is both the cradle of human progress and a crucible of conflict -- shows us that when define ourselves narrowly, in opposition to somebody just because they’re of a different tribe, or race, or religion -- and we ignore who is a good person or a bad person, are they working hard or not, are they honest or not, are they peaceful or violent -- when we start making distinctions solely based on status and not what people do, then we're taking the wrong path and we inevitably suffer in the end. This is why Martin Luther King called on people to be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. And in the same way, people should not be judged by their last name, or their religious faith, but by their content of their character and how they behave. Are they good citizens? Are they good people?”

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

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

People, Peace, Faith, Religion

“There's not a stupidest thing--I've dressed in women's clothes, I've dressed as a Nazi. I've gone onstage naked. I've gone on so drunk I didn't even know I did a show. I've done so many stupid things, but it's all part of Ozzy. I never pre-planned 99.9% of the things I've done. Some were drastically wrong, some were drastically right. I don't know if you saw the VH1 thing [VH1's Behind The Music Ozzy documentary] recently. In one hour, it's impossible to write my life down. I come from a rather large family, three older sisters and two younger brothers. On the documentary, they interviewed my sister and it was the first time I'd seen her in years. I've had a very, very unique life. I often sit back and remember when I had no money--when you're in the middle of it, you get depressed thinking it's going to last forever. All of a sudden, out of nowhere--a bolt of lightning--here I am! I'm very well-off; I've got property all over the place, I've had a very fruitful career. But I've never had a No.1 album in America. But I've lasted several generations and somebody says to me, "Do you notice any difference in the audience?"”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I've been doing it now for 30 years. Some of the fans are older, but I've picked up new fans along the way.

Launch.com, October 30, 1998

Life, Women, Money, Stupidity

“Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Life, Angels, Learning

“They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Painting

“I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don't believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn't want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn't know how to return the treatment.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Speech, New York City (12 December 1964).
Attributed

Men, People, Time

“I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember you stand in somebody else's way; you are a tree bearing no fruit, standing where another fruitful tree might grow.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 145.

God, Way, Thinking, Tree

“Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

Hajo Meyer (1924–2014) Dutch physicist

Quoted in Graeme Murray and Chris Watt, " Auschwitz survivor: 'Israel acts like Nazis' http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/auschwitz-survivor-israel-acts-like-nazis-1.1000918", Sunday Herald, January 24, 2010. Retrieved on March 27, 2010.

Hate, Soul

“There is no question but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. As somebody commented about him at the last Nürnberg party congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been seen in this world. His body does not suggest strength. The outstanding characteristic of his physiognomy is its dreamy look. I was especially struck by that when I saw pictures taken of him in the Czechoslovakian crisis; there was in his eyes the look of a seer. This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler's is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable, and unreasonable. … So you see, Hitler is a medicine man, a spiritual vessel, a demi-deity or, even better, a myth.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

During an interview with H. R. Knickerbocker, first published in Hearst's International Cosmopolitan (January 1939), in which Jung was asked to diagnose Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin, later published in Is Tomorrow Hitler's? (1941), by H. R. Knickerbocker, also published in The Seduction of Unreason : The Intellectual Romance with Fascism (2004) by Richard Wolin, Ch. 2 : Prometheus Unhinged : C. G. Jung and the Temptations of Aryan Religion, p. 75

World, Question, Time

“I don't… like… girls… whining… and complaining… about… wanting a man! I never liked Sex and the City, the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find the Man. It is just not up my alley. I don't believe in it. There is nothing you can control about love. Somebody once said, Everything you want in the world is just right outside your comfort zone. Everythingyoucouldpossiblywant!”

Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States

Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)

Love, Women, World, Sex

“At a very early stage I realised that it's a real problem to perform electronic music on stage because electronic instruments are not particularly convincing on a visual point of view: somebody behind his computer, it's not particularly visual. So I was inspired by the opera. And what was the opera in the 19th century? It was the idea for a musician to join and to work, to collaborate with a stage director, with carpenters, painters, people doing decors, graphic artists to have a visual prolongation, a visual correspondence to their work. That's what I tried to do with the tools of my generation: electronics and video and lights and all that.”

Jean-Michel Jarre (1948) French composer, performer and music producer

interviewed on the Danish Monitor radio programme 2005-11-30

People, Music, Idea, Problem

“None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk. None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy. It will not. People of goodwill will continue to debate the merits of various policies, as our democracy requires -- this is a big, raucous place, America is. And there are good people on both sides of these debates. Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual -- that’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change -- that’s how we lose our way again. It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by those families if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practiced cynicism.”

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

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)

People, Truth, Family, Way

“The idea of the saint is the exact opposite of the priest in service of the Holy. The priest is a functionary of the Holy;' there is no Holy without its officials, without the bureaucratic machinery supporting it, organizing its ritual, from the Aztecs' official of human sacrifice to the modern sacred state or army rituals. The saint on the contrary, occupies the object petit a, of pure object, of somebody undergoing radical subjective destitution. He… enacts no ritual, he conjures nothing, he just persists in his inert presence.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

130
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Idea, Support

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity — she doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little bit less like that, and that's pretty powerful stuff.”

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

Interview on radio staion 610 WIP (20 March 2008), as quoted in Chris Wallace criticizes Fox & Friends for "two hours of Obama bashing" in which hosts "distort … what Obama had to say" (21 March 2008) http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200803210008 2008

Way, Feeling, Nature, Personality

Quotes about somebody page 2

Quotes about somebody
page 2