“There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.”
Quote collection
People Quotes — page 827 of 5018
“People who come up to me are drummers or fans of the band. I don't get it too much, but I'll be somewhere and someone will have me take a picture or something.”
“There's something about the rawness of the live thing, there's no rhythm guitars behind the solo, nothing other than what you hear the people playing at that moment. It's exciting, it's about the performance.”
“People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.”
“Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.”
“When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.”
“I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have nor the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
“I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.”
“Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires”
“Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.”
“I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.”
“The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next”
“[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.”
“Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.”
“The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.”
“People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.”
“[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.”
“Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.”
“In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged.”
“Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.”