Quotes about someone
page 31

Paul Simon photo

“Someone told me
It's all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

At The Zoo
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)

Ingrid Newkirk photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Kiefer Sutherland photo

“Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.”

Kiefer Sutherland (1966) English-Canadian actor, director, producer, voice actor

Interview in The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1429594,00.html (6 March 2005).

Joseph Joubert photo
Vanna Bonta photo
Geoff Dyer photo
Kathy Griffin photo
Andrew Tobias photo

“Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 16, How To Buy Insurance, p. 296.

Amartya Sen photo

“Be careful not to blame yourself if someone rejects Christ. If you do, you might be tempted to take credit when someone accepts him.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Tila Tequila photo
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photo

“The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who's winning an argument with a liberal.”

Peter Brimelow (1947) American journalist

Source: Today’s Letter: A VDARE.COM Contributor Worries About Smears; Peter Brimelow Reassures Him. https://archive.is/20120529012624/www.vdare.com/letters/tl_090503.htm

Ray Kurzweil photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Poliziano photo

“Someone might object, "But you do not express yourself like Cicero". What of it? I am not Cicero. But I think I express my own self.”
Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo.

Poliziano (1454–1494) Italian writer

Epistolae 8, 16. Quoted in Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (1995) by Martin L. McLaughlin, p. 203.

Prem Rawat photo

“If you want external happiness, it can be an elusive desire. Internal happiness needs only to be revealed. It is not elusive because it is within you. It is your treasure. If you take someone else's treasure, it is stealing, but if you turn to your own, it is not. Happiness is your own treasure because it lies within you.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Fernbank, London, England October, 1971
1970s
Variant: If you want external happiness, it can be an elusive desire. Internal happiness needs only to be revealed. It is not elusive because it is within you. It is your treasure. If you take someone else's treasure, it is stealing, but if you turn to your own, it is not. Happiness is your own treasure because it lies within you.

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Larry Niven photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Edward de Bono photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Successful people in the workplace like to recognise and to congratulate those around them. Too often we forget to thank and to recognize when someone else has done a great job.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.51

Alison Bechdel photo
Paul Graham photo
Fernando Sabino photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Margrethe II of Denmark photo

“One may well use one’s head even though one is in love. Someone has said that one cannot prevent lightening from striking – but one may prevent the whole town from burning down.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

From 'Om man så må sige – 350 Dronning Margrethe-citater', quoted in English here http://trondni.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/new-books-wit-and-wisdom-of-margrethe-ii.html.
Personal

Courtney Love photo
Salvador Dalí photo

“Someone like myself, who claimed to be a real madman, living and organized with a Pythagorean precision..”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 17

Daniel Handler photo
Yukihiro Matsumoto photo
Mel Gibson photo

“I became an actor despite that. But with this look, who's going to think I'm gay? It would be hard to take me for someone like that. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

Discussing the perception that many actors are gay in an interview with El Pais magazine, December 1991.

Ken Livingstone photo

“When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Criticising Londoners who drive 4x4s in an interview with GMTV (broadcast 23 May 2004), as quoted in "Drivers of 4X4s in London are idiots, says Livingstone" by Ross Lydall in Evening Standard (21 May 2004)

Fran Lebowitz photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Iain Banks photo
Patrick Stump photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Rudolf E. Kálmán photo

“I have been aware from the outset (end of January 1959, the birthdate of the second paper in the citation) that the deep analysis of something which is now called Kalman filtering were of major importance. But even with this immodesty I did not quite anticipate all the reactions to this work. Up to now there have been some 1000 related publications, at least two Citation Classics, etc. There is something to be explained.
To look for an explanation, let me suggest a historical analogy, at the risk of further immodesty. I am thinking of Newton, and specifically his most spectacular achievement, the law of Gravitation. Newton received very ample "recognition" (as it is called today) for this work. it astounded - really floored - all his contemporaries. But I am quite sure, having studied the matter and having added something to it, that nobody then (1700) really understood what Newton's contribution was. Indeed, it seemed an absolute miracle to his contemporaries that someone, an Englishman, actually a human being, in some magic and un-understandable way, could harness mathematics, an impractical and eternal something, and so use mathematics as to discover with it something fundamental about the universe.”

Rudolf E. Kálmán (1930–2016) Hungarian-born American electrical engineer

Kalman (1986) " Steele Prizes Awarded at the Annual Meeting in San Antonio http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Kalman_response.html", Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 34 (2) (1987), 228-229.

Haruki Murakami photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Glen Cook photo

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

William Golding photo
Lawrence M. Schoen photo

““You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”
She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will… There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”…
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.””

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“You have surely noticed among schoolboys, that the one that is regarded by all as the boldest is the one who has no fear of his father, who dares to say to the others, "Do you think I am afraid of him?" On the other hand, if they sense that one of their number is actually and literally afraid of his father, they will readily ridicule him a little. Alas, in men’s fear-ridden rushing together into a crowd (for why indeed does a man rush into a crowd except because he is afraid!) there, too, it is a mark of boldness not to be afraid, not even of God. And if someone notes that there is an individual outside the crowd who is really and truly afraid – not of the crowd, but of God, he is sure to be the target of some ridicule. The ridicule is usually glossed over somewhat and it is said: a man should love God. Yes, to be sure, God knows that man’s highest consolation is that God is love and that man is permitted to love Him. But let us not become too forward, and foolishly, yes, blasphemously, dismiss the tradition of our fathers, established by God Himself: that really and truly a man should fear God. This fear is known to the man who is himself conscious of being an individual, and thereby is conscious of his eternal responsibility before God.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, 1847 Steere translation p. 196-197
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Steve Bannon photo

“If Bernie Sanders had an ounce of [Michael] Avenatti’s fearlessness, he would’ve been the Democratic nominee, and we would have had a much tougher time beating him. Now, I don’t believe a professional politician is going to be there at the end of the day. I’ve always said it’s going to be someone like Oprah, or Avenatti, or somebody that’s more media-savvy that’s going to be there.”

Steve Bannon (1953) American media executive and former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump

Steve Bannon (in an interview with Bill Maher) as quoted by [Langois, Shawn, Michael Avenatti, a legitimate candidate in 2020? Steve Bannon seems to think so, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/michael-avenatti-a-legitimate-candidate-in-2020-steve-bannon-seems-to-think-so-2018-09-30, September 30, 2018, MarketWatch, September 30, 2018]

Neil Gaiman photo
Mitt Romney photo

“In Barack Obama's government-centered society, government spending always increases because, well, why not? There's always someone who's entitled to something more and who's willing to vote for anyone who will give them something more.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Mitt Romney: Wisconsin primary speech http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/mitt-romney-wisconsin-primary-speech-transcript-video/2012/04/03/gIQALzmEuS_blog.html
2012

Rob Enderle photo

“FRAND licensing … in theory, would prevent someone with competitive problems from raising prices on competitors to cripple them if they were successful. Interestingly, the only firm in recent memory that ever did this was Apple …”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Why the Smartphone Market Works and Why Apple Wants to Kill It http://techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/2017/06/12/432715-why-smartphone-market-works-why-apple-wants-kill.htm in TechZone360 (12 June 2017)

Anastacia photo
William Golding photo
Lois Duncan photo
Warren Farrell photo
Dara Ó Briain photo
Indro Montanelli photo
George Soros photo

“Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

"How Do You Say ‘Billionaire’ in Esperanto?" in The New York Times (December 16, 2010) http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/how-do-you-say-billionaire-in-esperanto/

Jacob Tobia photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“From someone whose dad buys him a spade for Christmas, I thought you'd be grateful!”

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

Xfm 15 December 2001
On Stephen Merchant

Ernest Thayer photo
Ramakrishna photo

“Once someone gave me a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me. It talked about nothing but sin. Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner… Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)

“You know what intimacy is? It's into-me-you-see… it's allowing someone to know who you are when you have all these defenses to keep them from knowing.”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

A Conversation with Martin de Maat (1998)

“Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 92

Leo Buscaglia photo
Otto Neurath photo
Ted Kennedy photo
Josh Lucas photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

"Our Mission Statement" in National Review (19 November 1955) http://www.nationalreview.com/article/223549/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr.

Ron DeSantis photo

“I think all that has to be vetted in a way that errs on the side of protecting the American people. If there's a chance that someone may be inclined to be an enemy of the country, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.”

Ron DeSantis (1978) Florida politician

Rep. Ron DeSantis on refugee debate: 'Err on side of protecting the American people' http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/11/27/rep-ron-desantis-on-refugee-debate-err-on-side-protecting-american-people.html (November 26, 2015)

Richard Russo photo
Mark Manson photo
Alan Keyes photo
Jaime Pressly photo
Joseph McManners photo
Marek Sanak photo
Josh Groban photo
Hugo Weaving photo

“In a real fight, there ain't no time and you've got to use your wits. If someone were threatening the life of my child, then I'd be a good fighter. If somebody just wanted to steal my wallet, well, maybe I wouldn't worry about it so much.”

Hugo Weaving (1960) Nigerian born British-Australian actor

Interview at about.com http://actionadventure.about.com/cs/weeklystories/a/aa051003.htm on The Matrix Reloaded.

Samuel R. Delany photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"Trout Fishing in Europe" The Toronto Star Weekly (17 November 1923)

Noel Coward photo
John Mayer photo

“I am not in Us Weekly. I'd have to be going out with someone who is in there to be in there myself.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

The (now ironic) quote on how he shows self-restraint with his fame
Small, Mark (2005). "John Mayer '98: Running with the Big Dogs" http://www.berklee.edu/bt/172/coverstory.html Berlee.edu (accessed February 22, 2007)

Chris Cornell photo

“I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Come on, Big Boy — Let Me See Your Manuscript," review and interview by Herbert Gold, The New York Times (1987-08-02)

Sam Harris photo

“If someone grabs you, you will only try to grab back if you are scared.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wisdom Quotes

Jane Roberts photo
Michael Grimm photo

“I want to kill Grandma? It’s not respectful to say someone wants to kill Grandma when I spent sixteen years of my life putting my life on the line to protect Grandma.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Town hall meeting, Staten Island, New York (27 April 2011). http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/158415-conservative-lawmaker-meets-another-crowd-angered-by-rep-ryans-budget
2010s

David Miscavige photo

“Do I think that we should work with the community or the police or the medical people down there to work out what to do if there’s another Scientologist who needs care and we want to avoid psychiatric treatment? Yes I do. And why is that? No matter what the circumstance … anybody would want to do something to avoid someone dying.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Discussing the death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in Clearwater, Florida — [Thomas C., Tobin, The Man Behind Scientology, http://www.sptimes.com/TampaBay/102598/scientologypart1.html, St. Petersburg Times, October 25, 1998, 2010-07-03].

“Never confuse someone else's inability to do something with its inability to be done.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16

Yeh Kuang-shih photo

“As a leader, you should have values and beliefs… It is simply irresponsible to respond to public criticism by simply giving someone a demerit.”

Yeh Kuang-shih (1957) Chinese diplomat

Minister critical of delays in Airport Rail construction (2013)

Sei Shonagon photo