Top 100 People Of Character Quotes
#1. People of character don't allow the environment to dictate their style.
Lucille Kallen
#2. We've had enough of pragmatists and self-seeking risk-takers. We need people of character.
N. T. Wright
#3. In our post-Freudian world, it is no longer a goal to become people of character who live out a God-ordained ideal of selfhood.
Tony Campolo
#4. People of character do the right thing, not because they think it will change the world but because they refuse to be changed by the world.
Michael Josephson
#5. Beware of people who constantly assert their integrity and honor. People of character don't have to point it out.
Michael Josephson
#6. If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you've got a character. It's got to feel like people I know and it doesn't just become a bag of tricks.
Jez Butterworth
#7. My philosophy is always, "Let's get the spirit of the character." If people believe in it and the spirit of it, then it will work.
Julian Jarrold
#8. I think the genre of comics sometimes overtakes the medium, and people assume that they are kind of frivolous. If you have a good, strong story teller, they can be as affecting as any character in literature. Period.
Chip Kidd
#9. People that are brilliant and successful, we think they've just always been that way. That's not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It's prepared them. I've never felt like you could develop character without adversity.
Bobby Bowden
#10. I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, people will be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#11. There are probably only a certain number of people who can understand or tolerate how long a job will take and what demands it puts on you. And why should they? It breeds a strange kind of selfishness immersing yourself in a character for so long.
Dominic Cooper
#12. True greatness means that, even if you forget what you've done for others, you never forget what others have done for you. It means always doing your utmost to repay debts of gratitude. Such people radiate integrity, depth of character, bigheartedness and charm.
Josei Toda
#13. My thing was always more character-driven comedies, not sketch comedy - not that there's not room for both or one isn't enjoyable, just my personal taste, I like movies that comedy comes from out of flaws of people, things that are uncomfortable, out of tragedy.
Vince Vaughn
#14. In fact, most deaths are not tragic. Few people die because of a flaw in character, which is the essential element of tragedy. They just die.
John Chancellor
#15. I don't want to play the same character seven times. I think people would probably get bored of it.
Anna Popplewell
#16. I would defy people to find a more beautifully developed character than Seven of Nine.
Jeri Ryan
#17. I was a solid C student because I was doing so many plays. I was a drama nerd, but I was also kind of a Zelig-like character; I would shift between different groups of people. But the people I spent most of my time with were either chorus or swing choir or the drama nerds.
John C. Reilly
#18. Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.
Jon Stewart
#19. I'm from the East Coast. I love the city. I love the characters. I love the kind of people we are, the kind other people look at in amazement.
Ralph Bakshi
#20. Be the kind of person others admire, can count on, trust, and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do and you will be amazed at how many people will want to work with you. You will attract others based on your character.
Larry Winget
#21. Up to here, in general, we have mainly stuffed the brain of the young people with a indigestible multitude of varios notions, without thinking about enough of the prime necessity to form their character.
African Spir
#22. Declaring the San Gabriel Mountains a national monument will make this natural wonder more accessible. It will welcome people from all walks of life and maintain the mountains' wild character at the same time.
Frances Beinecke
#23. What I do when I create a character is put in details from all the people I know who might be like that person, and then put in a huge amount of myself.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#24. People usually gossip about people they don't quite understand, are jealous of, or have other negative feelings for.
Innocent Mwatsikesimbe
#25. You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up.
Jenji Kohan
#26. People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.
Michelle M. Pillow
#28. In my view, success is earned externally by being better than other people. But character, that sort of unfakeable goodness, is earned by being better than you used to be. And it's about self-confrontation.
David Brooks
#29. Portugal was born in the shadow of the Catholic Church and religion, from the beginning it was the formative element of the soul of the nation and the dominant trait of character of the Portuguese people.
Antonio De Oliveira Salazar
#30. I get letters from kids, teenagers and young girls who just want to be Mac. I've had quite a few people actually say that they're going to become a Marine or a JAG lawyer because of me ... the character. I think that's pretty cool!
Catherine Bell
#31. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.
Jean Fritz
#32. Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.
Melissa Bank
#33. I was shocked by the reaction I got for Bleak House. It was very intensive but one of the best jobs of my life. It was a chance to play a character that grows and develops and I was very enmeshed in it. But I didn't realise how stylish it was and how much people would love it.
Anna Maxwell Martin
#34. Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.
Brett Gelman
#35. I don't think it's at all weakening of the system if people with the same last name put themselves forward to the electorate, when their experiences, their character, and in my case, gender, may be different.
Hillary Clinton
#36. But the same thing was true in the army. You slept in a barracks with all kinds of people of every nationality, every trade, every character and quality you can imagine, and that was a good experience.
Shelby Foote
#37. Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual. I think that's an essential difference in my pictures. I think they are more accurate in portraying young people as romantic - as wanting a relationship, an understanding with a member of the opposite sex more than just physical sex.
John Hughes
#38. The very essence of politeness is to take care that by our words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with themselves.
Jean De La Bruyere
#39. I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.
Allegra Huston
#40. You are the main character in the story of your life, but other people are the main characters of their own lives. And sometimes you can find healing just by playing a supporting role in someone else's experience.
Timothy Kurek
#41. Beneath this warm flesh beats the heart of a compassionate man, one who's fought his whole life to fulfill his people's dream. Just because you feel the need to lean on someone, to accept someone else's strength for a little while doesn't make you weak.
Kylie Griffin
#42. The measure of your character is not what you do when people are looking. It's what you do when you think no one is looking.
Jason Mraz
#43. People recognize me on the street for all kinds of different things that I've done. 'That Thing You Do' remains to be my favorite film in which I played my favorite character. That role is the one that I'm most recognized for.
Johnathon Schaech
#44. It is in the character of very few people to honour a prosperous friend without envy, and these very few people tend to become best friends.
Ruwayda Mustafah Rabar
#45. I don't think a lot of people really understand the commitment it takes to being a character that an actor in Hollywood would take to approaching a role that they're doing.
Misty Copeland
#46. People don't change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character
Chad Kultgen
#47. Outrageous generosity is a character quality of people who win with money.
Dave Ramsey
#48. The number one reason for the death of young actors' careers is people get so used to seeing them playing that one character that they can't accept them as anyone else.
Denzel Whitaker
#49. I think a lot of people think I'm doing kind of a character onstage, but what you're really getting is just me.
Harland Williams
#50. When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.
Tom Hughes
#51. I really was a fan of his and always have been - his writing especially, you know? I think people a lot of times overlook that part, because he kind of got into that party character so heavy.
Alan Jackson
#52. Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.
Andrea Seigel
#53. If you steal other people's characters, it doesn't work with the context of the scripts and what is written, so I wanted to make her my own. I was petrified, in the beginning, because it's such an iconic character, especially being a young lady myself.
Tamsin Egerton
#54. I always start from scratch with a character - they're never based on anyone else. You get ideas of what people look like, and I'm a great people watcher. You can draw inspiration from people.
Amanda Burton
#55. One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.
Ethan Hawke
#56. Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you are getting to know better every day, something is bound to happen.
Anne Lamott
#57. Tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult.
Erica Jong
#58. The beauty of the character is that it's like camouflage. It's the best costume ever. I rarely get recognized as Pornstache when I'm out in public. Most people recognize me as the Law & Order guy, when I'm out in public.
Pablo Schreiber
#59. Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.
Samuel Johnson
#60. Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.
Elias Boudinot
#61. The strength of the United States is not the gold at Fort Knox or the weapons of mass destruction that we have, but the sum total of the education and the character of our people.
Claiborne Pell
#62. Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#63. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
Woodrow Wilson
#64. Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#65. The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race.
Octavia E. Butler
#66. He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"
-- Marlene Dietrich's character in Touch Of Evil, originally written by Whit Masterson as Badge Of Evil. One of the best closing sequences you'll see in classical Hollywood
Whit Masterson
#67. I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.
Darius McCrary
#68. The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.
Kathy Bates
#69. Millions of people, in all walks of life and in every endeavor, create distractions and excuses for themselves by focusing on tools rather than on character. They'd rather, as Socrates warned, focus on what they have than on what they are.
Eric Greitens
#70. Of course you cannot know a man completely,
his character, his principles, sense of judgment,
not till he's shown his colors, ruling the people,
making laws. Experience, there's the test.
Sophocles
#71. People's character is their behaviour - we're all capable of good and evil.
Bertie Carvel
#72. People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations.
Bessie Head
#73. You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.
Joel Kinnaman
#74. Being on the run wasn't fun, but it was something I had to do. I was actually working in legitimate jobs. I wasn't living on people's credit cards. I was living like a character out of a movie. It was performance art.
Kevin Mitnick
#75. People act out of character when they're in pain.
Sarah Jio
#76. The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
Leon Trotsky
#77. Becoming a Leader of Character changes lives - our lives and the lives of the people we touch.
Dave Anderson
#78. In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.
Fred Melamed
#79. In school, when we lived in New Jersey, we went to Broadway a lot, so I saw a lot of Broadway plays, and I just loved being able to see people play a different character and, you know, be able to be themselves at the end of the night. So, I've always wanted to do it.
Jordin Sparks
#80. We are a people in more need of a little character than we are in need of an abundance of knowledge.
Abdullah Ibn Mubarak
#81. Be the kind of person you want to be attracted to. You will find that you are less and less drawn to people with difficult character issues and more desirous to find people who are full of grace, safety, acceptance, and a hunger to grow.
John Townsend
#82. I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.
Dana Spiotta
#83. Obviously, any time you're closer in terms of what your knowledge is to a character, you can add something. But an actor's job is not to play only people he can identify with.
Peter Riegert
#84. We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting that God who wants to accept them.
Phillip E. Johnson
#85. Interesting characters are troubled characters. The only problem I've had in my business is very few people - unfortunately, very vocal - confusing the difficult role that I play with me. I play these guys, but I'm not like them. I've been accused of bein.
Val Kilmer
#86. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.
Flannery O'Connor
#87. Sometimes minor characters are based on people I know, on friends of mine. But I'm not writing a thinly veiled version of my own life.
Cassandra Clare
#88. If you trust that the people making the show love the source material and the characters, and it's a different medium and there are different requirements for long-form storytelling that will hopefully carry over a number of seasons, then it's exciting.
Greg Bryk
#89. Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation.
Seth Godin
#90. We never plant trees in other people's yard and hope them to grow. We plant them in ours, water them and take care of them. We should do the same with our lives. Never lay it on others.
Saru Singhal
#91. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#92. I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.
Fred Melamed
#93. People build up a picture of Johnny Depp as being some sort of weird pirate character. In reality he's incredibly nice ... one of the nicest people I've ever met.
Freddie Highmore
#94. Every good story needs a good, bad and lost soul. A people to fight for, an item to turn the tide of battle, an enigmatic character, a motivator/mentor, and an unlikely reluctant hero.
Josh Rose
#95. Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.
Dan Brown
#96. God uses prayer to educate His people and to produce holiness of character in them.
Harold Lindsell
#97. A lot of people loved to hate my character on 24. I want to be the character people love to love.
Elisha Cuthbert
#98. I've been in the studio experimenting on making a CD of my own. I'm trying out different producers, styles, sounds. With music, as opposed to acting, you are not playing a character. You are showing people who you are. I really want to have my spirit in it.
Emmy Rossum
#99. God takes great delight in surprising His people with His goodness. He delights in being there for us, in coming through for us. He loves to give us the good gifts of His provision and grace that reveal to us His nature and His character.
John Paul Jackson
#100. Being an actor is a lot more involved than many people realize; there are hundreds of ways to play any character. Even for a stylized bad guy, there are 4 or 5 different personalities I can play off the top of my head without thinking - better and more experienced actors can do dozens or hundreds.
Conan Stevens
