Some of my best friends are white boys.
when I meet ’em
I treat ’em
just the same as if they were people. Ray Durem, Broadminded, 1951
The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being. Ashley Montagu
In individuals insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche
We’re so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another. We’re gonna save the fuckin’ planet? ... And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin’ great. It’s been here over four billion years ... The planet isn’t goin’ anywhere, folks. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, we’re goin’ away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake. George Carlin
But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. Anne Frank
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. Isaac Asimov
In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless. Sigmund Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal. Jane Austen
So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn’t own doodley-squat, so they couldn’t improve their surroundings so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment – that which they cannot anticipate. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Most people are full of themselves and speak only the obnoxiously superficial, in other words they're annoying as hell. Novala Takemoto, Missin’
There are moments when a kind of clarity comes over you, and suddenly you can see through walls to another dimension that you’d forgotten or chosen to ignore in order to continue living with the various illusions that make life, particularly life with other people, possible. Nicole Krauss, Great House
People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are. George Eliot, Middlemarch
People are forever finding something wrong with you. Brigitte Bardot
Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are. Karl Kraus
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Steve Jobs
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Thomas Jefferson
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958
Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. George Orwell
Great disparities of wealth in society, however, restrict freedoms every bit as much as restrictions on voting. Everyone is ‘free’ to send their children to private school, to have tea at The Ritz, to gamble on the stock exchange. These ‘freedoms’ are defended far more vigorously than the freedom to vote, yet they are in fact restrictions on freedom. For every one person who can have tea at the The Ritz, there are a hundred who cannot do so because they have not got the money. If 10 per cent can send their children to private school and secure for them a straight route back into the privileged class from which they came, 90 per cent cannot do so – are banned from doing so – because they cannot afford it.
Thus the ‘freedom’ handed out by capitalist society is more often than not the opposite of freedom. Yet the idea of freedom still prevails, because the prevailing ideas of any society are the ideas of the class which runs it.
So the people who fight against these ideas – whether in strikes, demonstrations, popular protests or just in argument – are always, or almost always, swimming against the stream. They are the minority. But this minority, unlike the passive majority, can involve other people far outside their immediate orbit. And once involved in struggle against the old society, people’s ideas can change decisively. Paul Foot, The Case for Socialism chapter 6
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future – and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. Albert Camus
‘Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.’
‘Oh, they don’t miss me,’ she said. ‘I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.’ She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. ‘Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around ... I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society. John Fowles, The Magus
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population – the intelligent ones or the fools? Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
Five per cent of people think; ten per cent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five per cent would rather die than think. Thomas Edison
It’s not that I don't like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book. Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books