Quotes About People

Passion could fray the bonds of union, divide one from another, and fatally wound the American experiment in democracy that Lincoln defined as "the capability of a people to govern themselves.

Passion could fray the bonds of union, divide one from another, and fatally wound the American experiment in democracy that Lincoln defined as "the capability of a people to govern themselves." He worried about trouble coming from the many as well as the few—or even the one, in the form of a demagogue who might try to profit from lawlessness and distrust.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

the people are intelligent, the people are just, and in time these characteristics must have an effect on their Representatives.

His larger argument was that a president should not simply defer to the will and wishes of the Congress or the judiciary. Instead, Jackson was saying, the president ought to take his own stand on important issues, giving voice as best he could to the interests of the people at large.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.47 This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

The search for the point of temperate power between competing elements of life—the national government and the states, the states and the people—was far from over.

After his own presidency, Adams observed, "The people…ought to consider the President's office as the indispensable guardian of their rights," adding: "The people cannot be too careful in the choice of their Presidents.

He called for unity against the forces of fear. "Now, the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us….If they divide us, they can make some hay. And all these years they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities, and dividing us.

We aren't all good people just trying to do good. Some of us are psychopaths . And psychopaths are to blame for this brutal, mis-shapen society.

We were much more frightening than Judge Ted Poe. The powerful, crazy, cruel people I usually write about tend to be in far-off places. The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people's flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.

sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people.

It felt as if the people on Twitter had been invited to be characters in a courtroom drama, and had been allowed to choose their roles, and had all gone for the part of the hanging judge. Or it was even worse than that. They all had gone for the part of the people in the lithographs being ribald at whippings.

The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people's flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.

For all our mythologizing, the margins can be painful and some people are there because they have no choice.

You're standing on an escalator and you're watching the people go past on the opposite escalator. If you could climb inside their brains you would see we aren't all the same. We aren't all good people just trying to do good. Some of us are psychopaths. And psychopaths are to blame for this brutal, misshapen society. They're the rocks thrown into the still pond.

with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people.

As a group they tend to be more charming than most people," she said. "They have no warm emotions of their own but will study the rest of us.

the madness business is filled with people like Tony, reduced to their maddest edges.

We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it.

I remember that Karl Marx line about religion being the opium of the people—his idea that the elites keep the masses subdued with illusory happiness.

On the communist regime of Ceau?escu) Romania, said Eugene, was twenty million people living inside the imagination of a madman.

The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on to others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light on to them, de-demonise people that might otherwise be seen as ogres.