Figuring People Out Quotes & Sayings

When you've only got few days of rehearsal before you're in the studio, it's wonderful to start off with people that you have good, friendly, tolerable relationships to start with, for the simple reason that you don't have to spend 24 hours figuring out how sensitive they are, and can you give them a line reading, or how do you have to give them direction. — John Cleese

There's a huge misconception that innovation is mostly about inventing or coming up with cool new things. More often than not, innovation is about figuring out what people really need or want but can't have or afford. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

I think that if there's some innovative entrepreneurs out there who can help teach people how they can cost-effectively help themselves and their planet, I think everybody would be for it. That's going to be the challenge - figuring a way to get the marketplace and commerce to teach us consumers another way. — Ricky Schroder

Instead of the word 'love' there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes. — Lemony Snicket

I don't think fashion week will go back to what it used to be because people are realising that the industry is completely changing. It's not just in Bryant Park any more, people are figuring out who their audience is, where they want to show, they aren't really playing by the rules. It's not so much about these editors, these buyers. — Alexander Wang

If you're going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people's countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think there's an alternative. Which would be renewable energy. — Winona LaDuke

If you don't have the ability or encouragement to use yourself in a physical way, you could become just another talking head. And talking heads run things. That's part of the reason why we're in such a sad state as a planet, because it's all about thinking, and thinking has led to a lot of aggrandizement - taking over [resources] and figuring out how you can steal and leaving people and the planet in an impoverished state. — Alice Walker

I'm at a period in my life when I'm figuring out my idea of who I am and what I want and how to hold onto love
all that big stuff. And I'm starting to realize that it can happen at any age. I know people who are in their 50s who are figuring out what they want and who they are, and I think it's great. It's like you're always approaching life as a beginner. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I have one talent, and that's figuring out what people want about two minutes before they know it themselves. — Felix Dennis

While the American people have the impression that scientists are hard at work figuring out this complex matter of climate change, it's not actually that complicated. — Margaret D. Klein

I just don't believe in wasting time. I see that all around me. People who live like they will be here forever. Using people, hating people, hating themselves, destroying the ones they love, destroying themselves. I believe in figuring out what you want and reaching out. And grabbing it. Is that so bad? — Lynetta Halat

I want to keep growing as a writer. I find myself doing unexpected projects and sort of challenging my idea of where I am in my career, or what I'm supposed to be doing. In fact, I'm not supposed to be doing anything. Just finding projects that are challenging to me. I want to be a writer who keeps growing and figuring out new things and hopefully people will follow me along as I publish these things. — Colson Whitehead

Jeez, on those TV real-life cop shows they don't do this. They got all kinds of guys with microscopes and computers figuring shit out.' 'We're a small department,' Jesse said. 'We can't afford smart people.' 'This could be a total waste of time,' Simpson said. 'Ah,' Jesse said, 'you are beginning to understand the intricacies of police work. — Robert B. Parker

People are going through tough times. I want to say to them, "Live your joy." I know I can tell them that because I went through a lot of hard times. I had a choice of either succumbing to the hard times or figuring it out. — Bonnie St. John

I've heard you talk about this town like it's the only thing you love aside from fixing cars. People go entire lives without figuring out exactly what they want from life. You already have it, and the future you and your dad have planned out for you is going to take it away from you. — Adi Alsaid

If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don't have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don't. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state. — David Graeber

People change. Time makes us grow. Life happens, good and bad, and it's the person you love, the man inside you can't live without, not the sum of what he did or didn't do when he was younger and still figuring life out. — Jay Crownover

Like you, I'm figuring out how to walk with Christ into my day, into Target, into church, into the kitchen, and most importantly, into the lives of other people. Christ doesn't stop being relevant just because I'm standing at my sink, cleaning out my closet, meeting over coffee, driving to the bank. — Emily P. Freeman

People go entire lives without figuring out exactly what they want from life. You already have it, and the future you and your dad have planned out for you in going to take it away from you. — Adi Alsaid

I tend to not speak up as much, so saying no is rather difficult for me. The biggest step of being an adult is saying, "This is what I do like. This is what I don't like." Being yourself means certain people aren't going to like that. I'm still figuring it out and taking things day by day. — Selena Gomez

It's not enough to raise awareness. You have to give people solutions, and you have to invite them to get involved in whatever way they can, whether that's doing volunteer work or taking a portion of their salary and figuring out where they want that money to go. You have to find ways to inspire people to get involved. — Madonna Ciccone

Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters) — George V. Higgins

I was supposed to be at the condo, wasting time on the beach, just Dad and me, figuring out college and my life and spending time together. Instead, I was in a new house with new people - including a future stepbrother who'd seen me naked. — Kody Keplinger

The difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is a bit like the difference between biology and medicine. Knowing that certain genes increase the risk of cancer is relatively easy. Figuring out exactly which people will get sick, or how to cure them, is a lot more complicated. — Alex Berenson

In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don't even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires - or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can't match. — Charles Duhigg

Then it began to dawn on us: There was no miracle moment. Although it may have looked like a single-stroke breakthrough to those peering in from the outside, it was anything but that to people experiencing transformation from within. Rather, it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best future results and then simply taking those steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the flywheel. After pushing on that flywheel in a consistent direction over an extended period of time, they'd inevitably hit a point of breakthrough. — James C. Collins

I'm certainly not an expert and I imagine I'll spend my life figuring it out. What I do know, is that you can't take it all on yourself: find amazing people to collaborate with, build a team, and support other people doing the same. When you share your goals and ambitions with other people and they share with you, you exist in an energizing cycle of always creating new things with people that believe in you. — Karlie Kloss

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick. — Lisa Cron

Along with a lot of other things, becoming a Bob Dylan fan made me a writer. I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it - I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that. — Greil Marcus

I'm a very introverted person. Nothing that's happened has changed that, but one of the reasons I write for teens is it's a real privilege to have a seat at the table in the lives of young people when they're figuring out what matters to them. — John Green

I was really selfish, and I didn't want to listen to anyone. Then I started working with some really amazing people, traveling more, and figuring out who I was as a person - looking at different things, listening to different music. — Charli XCX

A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely time in which you're just figuring it out, practicing. — Michael Tilson Thomas

All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another. — Milton Friedman

Figuring I might entertain myself with heckling, I walked to the bar. I never made it through the door. Instead, I leaned against the doorway, crossed my arms, and enjoyed the spectacle of Raven, Bailey, and Sawyer singing horribly along with Steve Perry.
The three blondes sang their talentless hearts out with Sawyer on a stool in the middle. Bailey wasn't singing as much as yelling to the music. Sawyer was talking the song. Raven though was really trying to sound good. Unfortunately, her sexy voice didn't translate well into song.
The few people in the bar clapped when the song ended. Mainly because Bailey and Raven were hot.
Sawyer ran to the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender nodded and gave her a big glass of root beer. She winked at him and told Bailey to pay the man. The kid was going to rule the world one day. — Bijou Hunter

One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona. — Jeff Bridges

Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party.
(p237) — Susan Cain

Humans want to conquer everyone they can, and buy everything they see. I think this is because humans have forgotten how to be happy. It's not their fault - it's not easy figuring out how to be happy in these days of anything-but-moderation. — A.S. King

By figuring out how the experience can help you move forward. That's the point of why it happened to you in the first place. There's something you're suppose to get from the moment that'll get you closer to your mission if you can see it. Most people can't. — Daniel Black

People are good at figuring out what's attractive, and computers are good at quickly searching and finding. You put them together, and bang! — Luis Von Ahn

Some people are faster than others; I'm just figuring it out later, that's all. I'm getting smart too late and old too soon. — Mike Tyson

In America we've spent over a billion dollars on autism research. What have we got for that? We've not seen anything that's appreciably impacted the quality of life of autistic people, regardless of their place on the spectrum. Quite frankly, we've spent $1bn figuring out how to make mice autistic and we'll spend another $1bn figuring out how to make them not autistic. And that's not what the average person wakes up in the morning aspiring to. They think: am I going to be able to find a job, to communicate, to live independently, either on my own or with support? Those are the real priorities. — Ari Ne'eman

No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that's why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting. — Emily Oster

I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm more likely to pay attention to your thought about my work. If, on the other hand, you're not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I'm not at all interested in your commentary. — Brene Brown

It's puzzling to me that so many self-help gurus urge people to visualize victory, and stop there. Some even insist that if you wish for good things long enough and hard enough, you'll get them - and, conversely, that if you focus on the negative, you actually invite bad things to happen. Why make yourself miserable worrying? Why waste time getting ready for disasters that may never happen? Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn't a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it's true that you may wind up getting ready for something that never happens, if the stages are at all high, it's worth it. — Chris Hadfield

The free market hasn't done a very good job "figuring out" how to pay workers enough. If it was solely up to the market, the people with the least power would be paid pennies ... or less. — David Rolf

I do have a lot of difficulty figuring out what I want to be working on, but what's the alternative? To be one of those people who has a million things they want to do, and then never does any of them? And then where will you be? — Cyndi Lauper

The pleasantries were just ritual, but ritual was important. In Amos' experience the more dangerous any two people were, the more carefully polite their social interactions tended to be. The loud, blustering ones were trying to get the other guy to back down. They wanted to stay out of a fight. The quiet ones were figuring out how to win it. — James S.A. Corey

So many people focus on who they will be that they never get around to figuring out who they are. — Shannon L. Alder

Design is about creating spaces for people to enjoy and of course, creating moments where you elevate the spirit, but 'design for good' is figuring out a program that not only creates better spaces, but creates jobs, creates new industry and really kind of raises the conversation about how we rebuild. — Cameron Sinclair

I've had many occasions since that time to appreciate this timely advice. For me, the hardest part of learning always boils down to figuring out why I should care. Other people's expectations matter to me, but they rarely clinch the deal. I need to build up my own reasons to engage. But once I jump over that hurdle, I'm good to go. I — Todd Rose

When we're creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading all of our carefully crafted text, figuring out how we've organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click. What — Steve Krug

A lot of people live in fear because they haven't figured out how you're going to react when faced with a certain set of circumstances. I've come to terms with this by looking deeply into whatever makes me fearful - what are the key elements that get the hairs up on the back of my neck - and then figuring out what I can do about it. — Chris Hadfield

Because as much as I love figuring out other people's puzzles, and love putting words together in ways that feel good to sing and sound good together and suit the melody, I think most of the best songs in the world are fairly clear about what they mean to say. — J. Robbins

Because I didn't have much money, I bought a small shop that fit my budget. The previous six owners had closed their business in three years. The store had no people traffic and, because of that, I was able to focus on figuring out how to provide a better service to each and every one of the customers that did come through. — Do Won Chang

There. You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me. — Robyn Schneider

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with. — Josie Maran

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they're talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of - or alongside - the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them. — Bobby McFerrin

What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do. — Yo-Yo Ma

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture. — Mike White

Do You Have DID?

Determining if you have DID isn't as easy as it sounds. In fact, many clinicians and psychotherapists have such difficulty figuring out whether or not people have DID that it typically takes them several years to provide an accurate diagnosis. Because many of the symptoms of DID overlap with other psychological diagnoses, as well as normal occurrences such as forgetfulness or talking to yourself, there is a great deal of confusion in making the diagnosis of DID. Although this section will provide you with information which may help you determine if you have DID, it is a good idea to consult with a professional in the mental health field so that you can have further confirmation of your findings. — Karen Marshall

There are many things that you can't measure. But the great fun of what I do for a living is figuring out ways to measure things that people previously considered intangible. — Bill James

I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable. — Nina LaCour

People do not buy fortune cookies because they taste better than every other cookie on the shelf. They buy them for the delight they deliver at the end of a meal. Marketers spend most of their time selling the cookie, when what they should be doing is finding a way to create a better fortune. Of course your job is to bake a good cookie, the very best that you can, but you must also spend time figuring out how to tell a great story. — William Mougayar

When I'm talking about a developing world, I also look at clean-water access - women who are more vulnerable to sexual violence when they're fetching water. And talking about what we have going on here, with our carbon footprints and our emissions, is just as important to me as figuring out how to provide clean water to people who need it in regions around the world. — Sophia Bush

We all play by the same rules. But some people spend more time reading those rules and figuring out how to make them work in their behalf. — Garth Stein

[The greatest barriers to forming alliances] are not figuring out what would make others want to join with you. Assuming that what excites you excites others. Spend more time assuming people have good reasons for what they do or say and then figure out those good reasons. — John Daly

Over time I've learned, surprisingly, that it's tremendously hard to get teams to be super ambitious. It turns out most people haven't been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what's actually possible. It's why we've put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you'll usually get there. And even if you fail, you'll probably learn something important. It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. — Eric Schmidt

With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those
broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and
Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern
movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just
waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my
makeup in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm
alive, but so what. — Douglas Coupland

She hoped Smoke was wrong about people being unknowable. She hoped that she could crack herself open like a nut and know herself, at least. Then she'd be able to start figuring out everybody else. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

Don't let people tell you to do it this way. You are on the verge of figuring out hybrid models
with companies and nonprofits, markets, government, crowd-sourced philanthropy. The capitalist system as we know it is not working. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Having no expectations for some people in your life can be depressing, if not devastating. But with others, it's what is necessary. The hard part is not just figuring out which one applies, but accepting it. — Sarah Dessen

When you're younger, it's hard because you're finding your identity, and then for 12 hours out of the day, you have to be a different person. So that's a tricky phase - as far as figuring who you are out and then figuring out the people that you're working with. — Hilarie Burton

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. — Charlie Kaufman

For all their expertise at figuring out how things work, technical people are often painfully aware how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons. They are opaque even to themselves. — Gary Wolf

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

Usually, the people who wind up making totally arbitrary choices - recklessly going for the next house, the next job, the next relationship that shows up - turn out to be over-calculating. They spend so much time figuring out the risks, looking at all the pros and cons, assessing every worst-case scenario, that no choice looks right, and sheer frustration pushes them to break the deadlock. Ironically, such irrational leaps sometimes work out. The universe has more in store for us than we can ever predict, and bad choices frequently smooth out in the end because our hidden aspirations know where we are going. — Deepak Chopra

No one has it all figured out, especially not the people who are acting like they do and judging you because of it. Pretending to be something you aren't because you're trying to please a bunch of judgmental hypocrites and shitheads is not the way to be happy. Living the life you want to live is. It really is that simple. — Tucker Max

The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why. — Michael Sandel

Discovering passion and purpose requires figuring out what works and what doesn't. Mature, successful people establish their on rules. These rules are measured by only one standard: do they work? — Robert A. Glover

The ... destructive ... message is that the parents don't trust their children to do what they are supposed to do whether it be learning to fall asleep on their own, figuring out how to safely climb a tree, or remembering to do the homework assignment. This message is especially harmful. Children cannot believe in themselves if the most important people in their lives don't believe in them.1 — Lysa TerKeurst

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. — Robyn Schneider

I think that most people will spend their whole life not figuring out what they're meant to do, or figuring out what they're meant to do on their way to do something else. So I just feel lucky that I know what I love to do. Everything else figures itself out. — Andy Kindler

It's actually totally badass to go from your twenties to your thirties. There are so many awesome things that happen to you! Like deeply bonding with your yoga pants, developing a burning passion for expensive cheese, having real, actual orgasms (!), not giving two shits what other people think, figuring out the things you actually like to spend time and money doing, and embracing giant underwear. — Ingrid Reinke

No matter what I tend to be doing, generally people always think I'm crazy, first of all, because I'm always talking about things in the future that haven't happened yet, and people have a hard time believing what's gonna happen. Secondly, I'm almost always a contrarian, whatever direction everybody else is going in, I'm probably figuring out a way to go in a completely opposite direction. — Trip Hawkins

I just started to understand my craft, what I wanted to do as an artist. It's just a growing process. Figuring out exactly what I wanted to do and obviously I toured a whole bunch. I did a lot of song writing for other people and then just settled back into my zone. — Young De

But that would put me on a path that would make me totally divergent from who I am. I don't have to go through the heartache many other people go through, of figuring out what makes them "wealthy." I know what brings me joy. — Ben Sollee

It's hard enough growing up and figuring out who you are and what on earth you wanna be and it doesn't help when people are constantly cutting you down — Selena Gomez

What the media is playing is what people want is really a false idea. Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear. — Boots Riley

People make this kind of money. Lawyers are just good at figuring out how to siphon a piece of it their way. — Elizabeth Camden

I love to work. I know that sounds ridiculous to say because all people love to work, but I love the homework that goes into acting. I love figuring out different ways of playing a scene. I love the energy of being on set. I love not getting enough sleep because I have to wake up early in the morning. — Amanda Schull

I never look at the internet because then you just have nothing else to do but just look. Most generally, and even myself as a consumer, you think you know what you want. But what's more interesting is figuring out what you don't want. I think the only way that I can do that is just to do what I think is right. That is the only real gesture of respect. Then people can react to the movie how they want to react. — Nicolas Winding Refn

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers. — Kelly Rutherford

I'm figuring out what I want by trial and error, and maybe that's not the best way, but it's all I've got. All I know is that I need to be my own person, someone shaped by my desire, not fear of disappointing the people who are supposed to love me. — Cora Carmack

The big news already broke. The file-sharing and all that stuff, it's a done deal. And I think figuring out how to make that a fair exchange for the people that make music is still an issue. — Liz Phair

To me that's what Jobs was about. He said at the end of the movie, 'When you realize that the world was created by people no smarter than you, your life will change.' That, to me, is a message for right now and people figuring out what they're going to do with themselves. — Joshua Michael Stern

Just recognizing and naming that many of the things we treat as historical fact are stories can help erode their power over our sense of identity and thinking. If they are stories rather than "truth," we can write new stories that better represent the country we aspire to be. Our new stories can be about diverse people working together to overcome challenges and make life better for all, about figuring out how to live sustainably on this one planet we share, and on deep respect for cooperation, fairness, and equity instead of promoting hyper-competitive individualism. — Annie Leonard

Management is getting people together to figure out how to transform inputs into outputs. In the process of figuring out the process of how people work together, you've got to figure out who's got what responsibilities, and how do they work together. — Clayton Christensen

It is so irresponsible for people in the 'I want to change the course of my society' community to not do the damn research into figuring out the latest science of how people change their minds, and under what conditions people change their minds, and what exactly in their minds is being changed.

The belief systems people hold are absolutely, in no way, shape, or form the result of any objective evaluation of information. The prejudices are inherited, they're socially inflicted, they're propagandized in school, in church, in communities, in families. They are reinforced by endless bouts of patriotic media and all of this nonsense. People are an emotional Gordian knot kaleidoscopic clusterfrack of prior prejudices stuffed into their heads and held aloft by the spears of social approval and ostracism. — Stefan Molyneux

It's very juicy to twirl your mustache and figure out why people do the horrible things that they do. It's not just because they are evil, but because that's how they somehow explain the world to themselves and justify themselves. It's always interesting figuring out how that happens. — Zeljko Ivanek