Characterize People Quotes & Sayings

We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). — Susan Cain

They are two very different people. It's almost a modern-day 'Odd Couple,' if I had to characterize it, with the two of them portraying pretty close to who they are, which is why it's a hybrid of a reality and a comedy show. — Dawn Ostroff

At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives - giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves - tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies. — Susan Cain

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to "force" their views on everyone else. "You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone!" Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure. — Larken Rose

I fear we have shot our bolt - but we have been to Pole and done the longest journey on record. — Robert Falcon Scott

The way I would characterize what you said about me is I do try to say what I think as clearly as I can without first thinking, "Uh-oh, which way is the wind blowing and are people going to like this?" — Christy Clark

A life without product is a wasted life — Sunday Adelaja

Unfortunately, as inspiring as people find Barack Obama, change can be interpreted in so many different ways. I think he might do a great deal of good things for social programs here in America and as well, as much as people want to characterize anybody who's a leader and try and sell that, and market it and characterize them in a good way or a bad way, I think it's very telling about the system that we have when we come to the realization that the war is not going to end. — Immortal Technique

No one that has ever been in combat ever wants to see war anywhere in the world. It is horrible. It's horrible looking at the pock-marked walls. It's horrible looking at the flesh embedded on walls in Bosnia. It was horrible looking and interviewing and talking to the kids who lost their parents, because Saddam Hussein decided to feed their parents to the lions in downtown Baghdad. To characterize particularly myself, but other groups, as wanting to advocate a war I think is not only disingenuous, I think it's a patent falsehood intentionally created to stigmatize a group of people. — Matt Shea

A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith. — Leland Ryken

Jesus doesn't call people to childish behavior but to childlike faith. The qualities of humility, trust, receptivity and a lack of self-sufficiency all characterize the person of faith. The kingdom of God is not earned by human effort but is received in childlike trust as a gift of the mercy and grace of God. — Anonymous

Women must commit to use our power-to on our own behalf so we can translate it into the power to help others and ourselves. — Gloria Feldt

A further reason for my hatred of ... ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one's power, optimally by killing somebody - a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost ... A good example of the type of self that has to kill other people in order to regain in an Ersatzform what it has lost is the famous Saint-Juste, who says that Brutus either has to kill other people or kill himself.
... I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as murderous swine. — Eric Voegelin

Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist. — Jean Genet

It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama - have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

If conversion makes no improvements in a man's outward actions then I think his 'conversion' was largely imaginary. — C.S. Lewis

The affluent white liberals who were pressing the legal claims of blacks and other minorities "were often sheltered, in their private lives, and largely immune to the costs of implementing minority claims."58 This reality made it possible for conservatives to characterize the "liberal Democratic establishment" as being out of touch with ordinary working people - thus resolving one of the central problems facing conservatives: how to persuade poor and working-class voters to join in alliance with corporate interests and the conservative elite. By — Michelle Alexander

Duke came to us. They volunteered to come to us and made a number of suggestions to some people on my staff. I don't know how I would characterize them, but there have been some discussions going back and forth between Duke and members of my staff. — Gray Davis

Treason is a strong word, but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be. — David Graham Phillips

I prefer other people to make judgments about the way I play and to characterize me, rather me describe myself. — Cristiano Ronaldo

It's easy for people to be characterized in public life based upon their personality, and I have a very direct, blunt personality. And I understand why some people would then characterize that, especially people who don't like you, as bullying, but it's not that. — Chris Christie

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week
a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. — Leif Enger

I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed. — Barney Frank

Decades of social science studies have confirmed what the Heidi/Howard case study so blatantly demonstrates: we evaluate people based on stereotypes (gender, race, nationality, and age, among others). Our stereotype of men holds that they are providers, decisive, and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. Because we characterize men and women in opposition to each other, professional achievement and all the traits associated with it get placed in the male column. — Sheryl Sandberg

I don't want to, in any way, characterize a race or a people or get accused of racial profiling, but the Irish, as lyrical and romantic as they can be in their poetry, they can be every bit as repressed in their personal relations. — Stephen Lang

A woman mixed of such fine elements
That were all virtue and religion dead
She'd make them newly, being what she was. — George Eliot

We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version. — John Carmack

I feel that I, and the people under my command, tried to use all the traditional methods of recruiting agents which were also used by other intelligence services; adopting also means like pressure, money, sex - but that did not characterize my service. — Markus Wolf

Wiseman has identified four principles that characterize lucky people. Lucky people tend to maximize chance opportunities. — Ken Robinson

I can't do anything about how people who are all but completely unaware of my actual motivations and my actual thought process and my actual worldview, how they characterize me. There's not much I can do about it, except never say another word other than 'there's a ground ball to shortstop.' And I don't think that's going to happen. — Bob Costas

All the myths and stereotypes used to characterize black womanhood have their roots in negative anti-woman mythology. Yet they form the basis of most critical inquiry into the nature of black female experience. Many people have difficulty appreciating black women as we are because of eagerness to impose an identity upon us based on any number of negative stereotypes. Widespread efforts to continue devaluation of black womanhoodmake it extremely difficult and oftentimes impossible for the black female to develop a positive self-concept. For we are daily bombarded by negative images. Indeed, one strong oppressive force has been this negative stereotype and our acceptance of it as a viable role model upon which we can pattern our lives. — Bell Hooks

The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people. — Oliver Goldsmith

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force — Frantz Fanon

Six months since we met up again we are inseparable, an intricate weave. No longer do I believe this is a temporary fling. More like total commitment. More like I have walked down the aisle, holding hands with the monster. — Ellen Hopkins

I had to decide who I was, Night or Day, Human or Vampire. — P.A. Ross

If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character. — John Viney

I do not believe that there is any secret or single formula for success, but there are common threads of thought and action that characterize the successful people that I have been fortunate enough to know and observe. I do know, from my own experience, that our chance of succeeding is much greater when we organize and take charge of our lives. When we are willing to make decisions, we aggressively pursue those things in life that are important to us. — Merlin Olsen

I played in Velvet Revolver, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is. — Scott Weiland

Sometimes you do get caught up in the midst of becoming ... a product, a brand, and not having a say in any of that. — Becky G

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel ... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. — Martin Van Creveld

I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money. — Elvis Presley