Quotes on People

People are funny. When they are young, they will spend their health to get wealth. Later, they will gladly pay all they have trying to get their health back.

People may teach what they know, but they reproduce what they are.

People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves.

Believing in people before they have proved themselves is the key to motivating people to reach their potential.

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. How do you gain influence from people? You invest in them. How do you invest in them? It starts with giving them time.

The only way on Earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

Become genuinely interested in other people.

Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

You will read in the newspaper more often about federal courts, but the law that affects people, the trials that affect human beings are by and large in the state courts

A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.

Playing by the rules, one does the best he can, irrespective of the social consequences. Whereas in making the rules, people ought to be concerned with the social consequences and not with their personal interests.

We, the Black masses, don't want these leaders who seek our support coming to us representing a certain political party. They must come to us today as Black Leaders representing the welfare of Black people. We won't follow any leader today who comes on the basis of political party. Both parties (Democrat and Republican) are controlled by the same people who have abused our rights, and who have deceived us with false promises every time an election rolls around.

I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit.

Many people fail not so much because of their mistakes; they fail because they are afraid to try.

The world is full of people who want to play it safe, people who have tremendous potential but never use it. Somewhere deep inside them, they know that they could do more in life, be more, and have more -- if only they were willing to take a few risks.

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

There is no use whatsoever in trying to help people who do not help themselves.

Besides what has been said, people are fickle by nature; and it is a simple to convince them of something but difficult to hold them in that conviction; and, therefore, affairs should be managed in such a way that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had.

There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.