Quotes on People

Facebook seems to think that it would be liberating if everyone's News Feed could be personalized so that people see only and exactly what they want. Don't believe it. That's a prison.

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.

A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that's not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define 'nature.'

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.

Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.

I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.

People ask me in Europe, when they do interviews... they ask me, 'Well, how does it feel to be a cook in a country that doesn't know how to eat?' It always touches a nerve, because Europe and the world think that America is no more than bad hot dogs and bad burgers.

The young give us hope because young people are certain their best days still lie ahead - which explains why they're absolutely convinced they can change the world for the better.

I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.

Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.

People - especially white people - they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.

We can't underestimate the power that we have as individuals to provide the support that people need to provide that transition from a place of pain to a place of possibility.