Quotes About People

We overestimate the power of people who become cogs in giant organizations. The fact that they become cogs actually limits what they can do. . . . There's something very corrupting that happens to people who think they're going to work from inside a corrupt system.

True, fascism was not to be tolerated by decent people. But neither was racism or colonialism or slave labor camps—one or another of which was a characteristic of all of the Allied powers.

The government is an artificial creation, established by the people to defend everyone's equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when the government does not fulfill that obligation, it is the right of the people, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, to 'alter or abolish' the government.

The issues of free trade are complicated, but protestors asked a simple question: Should the health and freedom of ordinary people all over the world be sacrificed so that corporations can make a profit? Tens

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends

We need to dig under the rubble of war and point out that the Bush administration is using the war as a cover for worsening the income gap in this country, while paying no attention to the problems of most of the American people, while enriching corporations.

If I want to be remembered for anything, it's for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality, for getting more and more people to think that way. Also, for getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it. At certain points in history, they have used it.

It is a horrible thing, money. But it is also horrible to be the only one who hasn't got any. One of my chief complaints against people has always been that they had no respect for animals. But many people have a great respect for money. Animals with bank accounts of their own will be in a position to insist upon respect.

casualties were to be taken out of the public domain because they were deemed bad for morale and they put people off war, encouraging a poor attitude toward death and suffering.

But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk.

I was glad to be rid of him. He was one of those people who could go to New York and be fascinating, but here in his own world he was just a cheap functionary, and a dull one at that.

I suspect we could have done the whole thing on acid … except for some of the people; there were faces and bodies in that group who would have been absolutely unendurable on acid.

Las Vegas is not the kind of town where you want to drive down Main Street aiming a black bazooka-looking instrument at people.

Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they're real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them—still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.

The wide receiver had a real taste for crime, and he indulged it with an erratic kind of vigor that made him an albatross for Madden and a natural soulmate for my old friend, Al Davis, who remains the ultimate Raider. They were serious people, and John Madden was definitely one of them, for good or ill. Living with the Oakland Raiders in those days was not much different than living with the Hell's Angels. I

Some of the outlaws understand this communications gap, but most are puzzled and insulted to hear that "normal people" consider them horrible.

These were the people who made my attorney nervous. Like most Californians, he was shocked to actually see these people from The Outback. Here was the cop-cream from Middle America … and, Jesus, they looked and talked like a gang of drunken pig farmers!

They are like the handful of belongings saved from a burnt-down house. There should be a continuous challenge to authority for change and reform, and groups of ordinary people should form an alliance to reclaim what was taken by the state inch by inch, like a children's game, and enlarge the territory to the level of practical equality.

I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They're ready now, I think. So... they appear before us as part of their redemption. But you and I, we weren't to blame, were we? Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the table, Uncle Some shouted, Show me one soul who wasn't to blame! (2007: 162)

The madder people. A lot of them seem to be leaders of countries or religions or armies. The real loonies.

I understand horses better than I understand people, he said. I prefer their company most of the time, to be honest. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's this: A horse would sooner die in harness than rot in a field.

The dance of capital, the harmony of a balance sheet, and the way these abstractions interact with people, their characters and desires, either as individuals or in a mass. Understand that one is the other, that they are two separate ways of expressing the same thing, and you understand the whole nature of business.

There had been something very disquieting about the dinner-table downstairs. It had been laid for only three people.

What's the good of other people's opinions? Animals don't consult each other about other animals. They look and sniff and feel. In love and hate, and everything in between, those are the only tests that matter. But people are unsure of their own instincts. They want reassurance. So they ask someone else whether they should like a particular person or not. And as the world loves bad news, they nearly always get a bad answer – or at least a qualified one.