Quotes about somebody
page 8

William Safire photo

“Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can’t beat Somebody with Nobody.”

William Safire (1929–2009) American journalist

As quoted in The Quotable Politician https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/159228132X, William B. Whitman, Global Pequot (2003), p. 60.
Letter to H. R. Haldeman

Chris Cornell photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Kent Hovind photo
Ron Paul photo
Steve Jobs photo
Hilary Duff photo
Toni Morrison photo

“Every single time you help somebody stand up you are helping humanity rise.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 44

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Glenn Beck photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Marc Benioff photo
Mr. T photo
Paul Klee photo

“Kandinsky wants to organize a new society of artists. I came to feel a deep trust in him [ Kandinsky ]. He is somebody, and has an exceptionally beautiful and lucid mind.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote from Diaries III, 1911; as quoted by Enric Jardi, Paul Klee, Rizzoli Intl Pubns, 1991 - ISBN 0-8478-1343-6, p 12
In Autumn 1911 Klee made an acquaintance with August Macke and Kandinsky, and in winter he joined the editorial team of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. After meeting Kandinsky in Munch, Klee recorded this.
1911 - 1914

W. Edwards Deming photo

“Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 11

Dylan Moran photo

“Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics… and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what— there's a shortage, and… it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother… right about now… yeah… it's the, it's the funk soul brother… check it out. It's, er, well… it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the… well… it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited—maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say—but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim
Monster (2004)

Rob Enderle photo

“[Steve Jobs] is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he's excellent.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

The rock star of Corporate America http://marketwatch.com/story/apples-jobs-rock-star-of-corporate-america-2010-12-08 in MarketWatch (7 December 2010)

Richard Dawkins photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Andy Warhol photo
Toni Morrison photo
Sister Souljah photo
Tom Clancy photo
Sri Chinmoy photo

“The very nature of kindness is to spread. If you are kind to others, today they will be kind to you, and tomorrow to somebody else.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#9280, Part 93
Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979)

Merrick Garland photo

“The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Susan Neiman photo

“Would it be possible for somebody to hypnotize you into killing somebody?”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Waking Hours: Book 1 in East Salem Trilogy with Pete Nelson (Thomas Nelson), p. 113

Roberto Clemente photo
Thomas R. Marshall photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Charles Stross photo
Muhammad photo
Nelson Algren photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

D.H. Lawrence photo

“To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Sketches of Etruscan Places (1932)

Jeff Foxworthy photo
Kent Hovind photo
Pat Condell photo
Eminem photo

“The usual bad poem in somebody’s Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and little emptier than, brushing one’s teeth.”

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

“William Carlos Williams”, p. 216
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Samuel Butler (poet) photo

“The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 359
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Phil Ochs photo

“Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/small-circle-of-friends.html
Pleasures of the Harbor (1967)

“If somebody prefers an income distribution more favorable to the poor for the sole reason that he is poor himself, this can hardly be considered as a genuine value judgment on social welfare.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

Harsanyi, J. C. (1953). "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking". J. Polit. Economy 61 (5): p. 434

Karl Pilkington photo

“I saw a cockroach playing Pacman. It was on the internet, right, and somebody had linked up a cockroach to err… to some… I can't even be bothered explaining it, but that's what I'm saying - everything is moving on”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Podfather Trilogy, Episode 3 Christmas
On Nature

Mike Oldfield photo

“Somebody's out to get you
Hiding in the shadows
Poison arrows!
Somebody's out to break you
Hiding in narrows
Poison arrows!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo

“I called Anna Freud in London to tell her what was about to happen. It was a strange, honest conversation.
"Miss Freud, I am sure you have heard that Dr. Eissler is going to fire me from the Archives."
"Yes. And I disagree with him. I did not like that second article in the New York Times. And I think you are wrong in your views. But I do not see why you should be so severely punished for holding them. On one point, however, I feel that I was deceived by Dr. Eissler. He never told me that you were going to live in my house. My understanding was that you were to be in charge of the library and of the research, but not actually live in the house." I never did find out why Eissler never explained this to Anna Freud. Perhaps he was being discreet, not wanting to bring up the matter of her death, or perhaps he knew she would not like the idea of my living in the house. Of course, as things turned out, I never did live in the Freud house.
"Did the idea of my living in your house upset you?"
"Frankly, yes it did."
"Why?"
"Because my father would not have wanted it."
"You mean he would not have liked me?"
"I am not saying that. But he would not have wanted somebody like you living in the house. He would have wanted somebody quiet, modest, unobtrusive. You would have been everywhere, searching for everything, going through boxes, drawers, closets, bringing people in, opening things up. My father would not have wanted this." She was right.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: Final Analysis (1990), pp. 196-197

A. J. Muste photo
Ben Horowitz photo

“It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.”

Ben Horowitz (1966) American businessman

Ben Horowitz in: Ben Parr, " VC Ben Horowitz Says Founders Make Best Startup CEOs http://mashable.com/2011/10/18/ben-horowitz-web-2/," at mashable.com, 2011/10/18

Billy Joel photo

“Help," he said "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.”

Norman Maclean (1902–1990) American author and scholar

"A River Runs Through It", p. 22
A River Runs Through It (1976)

Tessa Virtue photo

“I would never even think about skating with somebody else. The whole reason I wanted to come back to skating was to be close to Tessa again, and to share those moments.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Scott Moir, quoted in "Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir Will Leave Huge Hole In Our Hearts, Canadian Figure Skating" https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/02/20/tessa-virtue-scott-moir-retirement-figure-skating-legacy_a_23366266/ (20 February 2018)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Scott Moir about Virtue

Sherman Alexie photo
Carl Sagan photo

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996.

Joe Dante photo
Carl Bernstein photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Dave Matthews photo

“I find sometimes it's easy to be myself, sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

So Much to Say
Crash (1996)

Mickey Spillane photo
John Leguizamo photo

“He thinks he can use the jail for networking to be somebody. In that way, he's always operating.”

John Leguizamo (1964) Colombian and American actor, film producer, voice artist, and comedian

John Leguizamo Talks About "Assault on Precinct 13", January 16, 2005.

Ralph Abernathy photo

“Now all the week long we've gone through that period of preparation, gettin' ourselves ready, askin' God to get us ready, askin' Him to purge us with His discipline and burn us with his fire and cleanse us and make us holy and ready to stand. For when you go down to downtown, you are goin' down there amidst mean and cruel people. Your'e goin' down there 'midst the police force and you've got to have God on your side. So you need to get ready. Ask Him to prepare you as He did Shadrach, Meshach and ABednego. You know, when they went to the fiery furnance, they said to the king, "We will not bow" But God was on their side… Just like God went in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew boys, God will go with us on whatever operation we decide on. Now, you can't win the battle at home. You got to go to the battlefield. Now when you go to the battlefield, ain't no need to go out there without expectin' to have some casualitites. Somebody will get hurt. I don't know who it will be. It may be me. If it is me, I can only rejoice in the Lord that I had a little part to play… Now nobody can enjoin God. I don't care what kind of injuction the city attorney seeks to get, he cannot enjoin God. This is God's movement. Nobody can enjoin God. There can be no injuction against God. Because Albany does not belong to the Democratic Party of the state of Georgia. Albany does not beong to the Republicans of the state of Georgia. Albany does not belong to Governor Vandiver. Albany does not belong to the white people of the state of Georgia. All-benny belongs to God, for the prophet said: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulllnes thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."”

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) American Civil Rights Movement leader

And this is God's world, this is God's All-benny, and God tells us that out of one blood He created all nations that dwell upon the face of this earth."
In a sermon he gave on 15 December 1961, during the Albany Movement; as quoted in Watters, Pat. 2012. Down to Now: Reflections on the Southern Civil Rights Movement. University of Georgia Press. pp. 202-203.

Murray Leinster photo
Lauren Faust photo
Keith Richards photo

“Rap — so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they're happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can't tell one note from another.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Reported in Jon Blistein, " Keith Richards: Rap Is for 'Tone-Deaf People' http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/keith-richards-rap-is-for-tone-deaf-people-20150903", Rolling Stone (September 3, 2015).

Abbie Hoffman photo
Gordon Bell photo

“Somebody once said, 'He's never wrong about the future, but he does tend to be wrong about how long it takes.”

Gordon Bell (1934) American computer engineer

Computer World "VAX Man" interview

Bill Gates photo

“Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority. It wasn't like somebody told me about it and I said, "I don't know how to spell that." I said, "Yeah, I've got that on my list, so I'm okay." But there came a point when we realized it was happening faster and was a much deeper phenomenon than had been recognized in our strategy.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Speech at the University of Washington, as reported in "Gates, Buffett a bit bearish" CNET News (2 July 1998) http://archive.is/20130102062335/http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html
1990s

Jerry Fodor photo

“If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.”

Jerry Fodor (1935–2017) American philosopher

Fodor (1998) " The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/jerry-fodor/the-trouble-with-psychological-darwinism" London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 2, 22 January 1998, pp.11-13

Roger Ebert photo
Dinah Craik photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo
M.I.A. photo
Goran Višnjić photo
Gavin Free photo

“I tried to bang Ray in my house, and bloody there was somebody already in there.”

Gavin Free (1988) English filmmaker

"Let's Play Minecraft - Episode 54 - I Spy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4L6mmscUk. youtube.com. June 7, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2016.

Taryn Manning photo

“Maybe my face is edgy, but that's because it's the face of somebody who's seen life.”

Taryn Manning (1978) American actor, musician and fashion designer

Interview, Pop-Rock Candy Mountain (2008-06-11)

Grover Norquist photo

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

James Garner photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Mary Kay Andrews photo
Jason Mraz photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Barney Frank photo
Michelle Gomez photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“You've got half the room going totally crazy, wild, they loved everything, they wanna do something great for our country, and you have the other side, even on positive news, really positive news, like that, they were like death, and un-American, un-American. Somebody said treasonous, I mean, yeah I guess, why not? Can we call that treason, why not?”

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

Speaking in Cincinnati about Democrats did not clap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjwPiE1wCU0 during his State of the Union Address (5 February 2018)
2010s, 2018, February

Andrew Bacevich photo
Gillian Anderson photo
Tom Wolfe photo
Ben Stein photo
Randy Pausch photo
Mitch Albom photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Punk: Wow, everybody, it's John Cena. He comes out here every Monday night, he's excitable, he throws his hat at somebody, everybody loves it. I am so impressed at how you do that. You get all these people to believe you're that friendly, smiling, everyday man, when I know the truth. And the truth, John Cena, is you're thoughtless, you're heartless, and above all else, you are dishonest. I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide, including yourself, that would love to believe this is over a spilled diet soda, but John, this goes way beyond my spilled diet soda. Yeah. John, you were fired from the WWE. You were gone. You gave a very tear-inducing speech in the middle of the ring about how you finally get to see your mom and hang out with your little brother, and you said you were gonna go away. You were gonna be a man of your way, but what happened? You came back later that night, and then you came back the next week, and then you came back the next week, showing all of these people who aren't intelligent to see through your facade what I have known all along—that your word is absolutely worthless. And then there's TLC, you have the man beaten. Wade Barrett, a very tough individual, and you have him beat in a chairs match, but that's not good enough for you. You don't take the high ground, you can't walk off into the sunset with your victory; you drag the man off to the side of the stage and you drop fifteen steel chairs on him, and I wanna know exactly why you think that's acceptable behavior. I wanna know why you think it's okay to show up the next night on Raw and humiliate the poor guy…
Cena: That is balderdash! Fifteen steel chairs? That's insane. It was 23 steel chairs. And in case you forgot, Wade Barrett and the Nexus gave me about five thousand beat-downs, made me their personal slave, and ended my career.
Punk: You wanna talk about ended careers, you hypocrite? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You ended the career of my good friend Dave Batista. John! John, look at me when I'm talking to you. This is a reoccurring pattern with you. Once again, you have the man beaten—last man standing, he verbally submits, how humiliating, the match is won. But, no, you AA him off a car through the very steel ramp that I'm sitting on, which facilitated the end of his career. Now we'll talk about Vickie Guerrero. I'm surprised the lovely Vickie Guerrero doesn't up and quit based on all the abuse you heap on her. It's not just the physical things to the Wade Barretts and the Dave Batistas, but it's the name-calling, it's the mental abuse to somebody as gorgeous and beautiful as Vickie Guerrero.
Cena: "It's the this… it's the that." Okay, CM Punk is gonna play Mr. Fingerpointer. Well…1.—Dave Batista broke my neck; 2.—He showed up on Raw the next night and quit on his own terms. And C—I didn't just single out Vickie Guerrero. In case you haven't been watching for the past… eight years, I talk about everybody. Uh… Michael Cole. Michael Cole has an anonymous fetish with Justin Bieber and has the word "The Miz" man-scaped right below his belly button. Me! Look at me. I look like the crazy sex child of the Incredible Hulk and Grimace. And then there's you.
Punk: Yeah, and then there's me, who happens to not be laughing. I don't know if you noticed that. You're not funny.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

December 27, 2010
WWE Raw

Dave Matthews photo
Thomas Hardy photo

“Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!”

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 41

Ron Paul photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo