People quotes
100.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside people — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want."
"One should not seek happiness, but rather happy people."
"Some people pursue unhappiness because happiness is too mild a sensation."
"It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it."
"I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest."
"Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good."
"Cultivated people foster what is good in others, not what is bad. Petty people do the opposite."
"What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence."
"You can successfully force people to follow a certain course, but you cannot force them to understand it."
"The Master said, "Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it.""
"To study and constantly, is this not a pleasure? To have friends come from far away places, is this not a joy? If people do not recognize your worth, but this does not worry you, are you not a true gentleman?"
"Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences."
"The Master said, “What a worthy man was Yan Hui! Living in a narrow alley, subsisting upon meager bits of rice and water—other people could not have borne such hardship, and yet it never spoiled Hui’s joy. What a worthy man was Hui!” (Analects 6.11)"
"On Easter, the Pope asked for peace in the Middle East. There are two groups the Pope has to contend with - Jewish people and Muslims. They couldn't wait to hear his suggestions."
"The capitalist culture of consumption... does not provide meaningful sustenance for large numbers of people."
"Without the funding Amtrak needs to keep operating, we will soon see people that rely on Amtrak to get them to work each day, waiting for a train that isn't coming."
"Ask questions then talk over answers, shout loudly you love everyone, try and hug people, confide in them that you are a sheep, offer them the last grass in your pockets. Then watch with a smile as they pretend you aren't there, and whisper you must be crazy, because you want to make friends."
"I fundamentally believe that people have a genuine desire to be positively engaged in the world around them."
"This is what you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be good, or just seem good? Do you want to be good to yourself and others? Do you care about other people, always, sometimes, never? Or only when convenient? What kind of person do you want to be?"
"Everyone has a time machine. Everyone *is* a time machine. It's just that most people's time machines are broken. The strangest and hardest kind of time travel is the unaided kind. People get stuck, people get looped. People get trapped. But we are all time machines."
