Quotes on People

Art is about trying to find the good in people, and making the world a more compassionate place.

There's a whole world of people out here whose experiences are not being reflected in the media that they're reading. And that does affect the way we view ourselves... and the people we think we can be.

For a lot of white people, just suggesting that being white has meaning will trigger a deep, defensive response. And that defensiveness serves to maintain both our comfort and our positions in a racially inequitable society from which we benefit.

Spend time with people who know how to use their days well. Just as iron sharpens iron, positive people will inspire you to be positive.

I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

Prop 8 did something that no other state in the history of this country has done. It took away the rights of people that already were legally affirmed. Imagine someone putting something on the ballot saying your wedding, your marriage is no longer valid.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Our decision-making is better when we draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group.

I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.

I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes.

I'm different than most people. When I cross the finish line of a big race, I see that people are ecstatic, but I'm thinking about what I'm going to do tomorrow. It's as if my journey is everlasting, and there is no finish line.

If people don't think they have the power to solve their problems, they won't even think about how to solve them.

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

What is it but a cunningly devised scheme to take from one State and to give to another - to replenish the treasury of some of the States from the pockets of the people of the others; in reality, to make them support the governments and pay the debts of other States as well as their own?

Democracy, as I understand it, requires me to sacrifice myself for the masses, not to them. Who knows not that if you would save the people, you must often oppose them?

Our mission... it will be difficult, it will take time, it will be demanding for all men and women... will be to act in such a way that French people of the Muslim faith are always more proud of being French than of being Muslim.

Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.