Quotes on People

One of the big mistakes I think we make in relationships is that we don't give our best energy to the people that matter most.

When you are in hard labor, remember that the length of labor is usually proportional to the number of people around. Avoid the presence of anybody who might release adrenaline. The best situation I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody else around than an experienced, motherly and silent midwife who does not behave like a guide or an observer.

I think it is quite dangerous for an organisation to think they can predict where they are going to need leadership. It needs to be something that people are willing to assume if it feels relevant, given the context of any situation

I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences

People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.

As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on coloniz­ing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.

Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people?

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people.

Whenever two people come together and their behavior affects one another, you have etiquette.

Many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of. Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about ‘good things’ that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God’s love.

Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

I don’t like to badmouth people. But I’m the head of a monarchy that began in the ninth century, and I’m apparently more modern than Chris Christie. Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right-wingers in his party, but the fact is, he’s not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head. It’s pathetic.

Try never to be the smartest person in the room. And if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people... or find a different room.

People change what they do less because they are given an analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.

Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.

Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies.

People aren't things to be molded; they are lives to be unfolded. And that's what true leaders do. They unfold the lives of others and help them reach their God-given potential.

It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

Together, we'll build a far better future for America -- a future of growth, opportunity, and security, anchored by the values of a people who are confident, compassionate, and whose heart is good.

Every morning when I wake up, I dedicate myself to helping others to find peace of mind. Then, when I meet people, I think of them as long term friends; I don't regard others as strangers.