Quotes About Petty People

#1. We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

William Butler Yeats

#2. Cultivated people foster what is good in others,
not what is bad.
Petty people do the opposite.

Confucius

#3. temples can wield great power, for they can motivate the masses to ignore self-preservation in the name of a holy cause. They have moral power, as well, ideally. But most are run by petty people with odd ideas about a civil society.

Terry Mancour

#4. For today the petty people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#5. You win when you refuse to fight petty people. Fighting little people reduces you to their size.

David J. Schwartz

#6. Without the knowledge of the true number of the people, as a principle, the whole scope and use of keeping bills of birth and burials is impaired; wherefore by laborious conjectures and calculations to deduce the number of people from the births and burials, may be ingenious, but very preposterous.

William Petty

#7. People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country.

William III Of England

#8. I think standing and fighting and working alongside all of these people that raise their right hand and serve their nation ... really wipes away the distractions of some of the petty things we think are important at home.

Pete Hegseth

#9. Petty things become unimportant when people are impassioned about a purpose higher than self.

Stephen Covey

#10. The topic of trust is an important factor in all matters of the heart - and here's why. Men lie to women. Women lie to men. And most people agree that some lying is even necessary - to avoid petty squabbles and to grease the wheels of a relationship.

Joyce Brothers

#11. We don't really make bad records, though some people might like some more than others. And we have never really done a bad show. So I think in a way maybe we've been taken for granted.

Tom Petty

#12. When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering.

Tom Petty

#13. The only thing I could figure was most people were so fucking self-righteous they liked to destroy others' wills so they felt like their own petty lives had some sense of purpose.

Andersen Prunty

#14. That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

George Mason

#15. If guys don't respect themselves, they don't respect other people. That's times and personalities. And all of them are not that way. But it don't take but one or two to screw up the whole crowd.

Richard Petty

#16. I don't get into these petty things, Kentucky-Louisville. To me, it's nonsense ... There will be people at Kentucky that will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us ... They've got to put the fences up on bridges. There will be people consumed by Louisville.

Rick Pitino

#17. Music really isn't supposed to be perfect. It's all about people relating to each other and doing something that's really from the soul. It must come from the soul.

Tom Petty

#18. ...the leader must 1) avoid getting swamped in detail; 2) not be petty; 3) not be pompous; 4) know how to select people to fit the task; 5) trust others to do a job without the leader's meddling; 6) be capable of clear decisions; 7) inspire confidence.

J. Oswald Sanders

#19. A regime that trawls for drug users or other petty delinquents will net a certain number of violent people as bycatch, further thinning the ranks of the violent people who remain on the streets. Incarceration

Steven Pinker

#20. I wanted ... people to listen to the pulse of nature, to partake of the wholeness of life and not forget, under the pressure of their petty destinies, that we are not gods and have not created ourselves but are the children of the earth, part of the cosmos.

Hermann Hesse

#21. One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.

Nick Hornby

#22. In books and movies infidelity always looks so compelling, so right. Here are people who defy petty convention and are rewarded with only the tastiest bits of human experience.

David Sedaris

#23. This is what should be meant by people power. The power for people to choose which of the government's petty, silly, pointless laws they want to obey. And which they don't.

Jeremy Clarkson

#24. You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.

Edgar Mitchell

#25. Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

Thomas Sowell

#26. Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.

Pablo Picasso

#27. Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

Lillian Hellman

#28. I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing ... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change.

Tom Petty

#29. History is not made by great dreams, but by the petty wants of all respectable, moderately thievish and selfish people, that is, of everyone. All our ideas, loves, plans, heroic ideals, all these lofty things are worthless.

Karel Capek

#30. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power.

Robert H. Jackson

#31. People are very hungry for something new. I think they are interested in being called to be a part of something larger than the sort of small, petty, slash-and-burn politics that we have been seeing over the last several years.

Barack Obama

#32. Why should people importune the Lord about small trials and petty ailments, and at the same time neglect to ask His guidance on matters of love and marriage which make or mar one's life?

Nephi Anderson

#33. The leaders of the petty bourgeoisie must teach the people to trust the bourgeoisie. The proletarians must teach the people to distrust the bourgeoisie.

Vladimir Lenin

#34. People thought that tragedy made you wise, that it automatically elevated you to a higher, more spiritual level, but it seemed to Rachel that just the opposite was true. Tragedy made you petty and spiteful. It didn't give you any great knowledge or insight.

Liane Moriarty

#35. If you have only been around people who use power in cruel and petty ways, then when you hear the very word, you may have a negative reaction.

Frederick Lenz

#36. I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.

John Fowles

#37. It is a mistake to talk of the twilight of age, or the blurred sight of old people. The long day grows clearer at its close, and the petty fogs of prejudice which rose between us and our fellows in youth melt away as the sun goes down. At last we see God's creatures as they are.

Rebecca Harding Davis

#38. People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.

Terry Pratchett

#39. 'Free Fallin' is a very good song. Maybe it would be one of my favorites if it hadn't become this huge anthem. But I'm grateful that people like it.

Tom Petty

#40. Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game. I mean, Tony Bennett is the coolest guy I ever met! We have to figure out how to break out of this age ghetto.

Bonnie Raitt

#41. Over half a century on and they're still complaining about it. Compare it to the fact that Garden State didn't win an Oscar and they seem a little petty if you ask me. I guess that just goes to show what kind of people they really are.

Zach Braff

#42. People destroy beauty when they find it. (Acheron)
How so? (Artemis)
By nature, people are petty and jealous. They envy what they lack and because they don't know how to acquire something, they try to destroy anyone who has it. Beauty is one of those things they hate most in others. (Acheron)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#43. He was going to hurt the people he hated, but inside he didn't feel any real sense of satisfaction. He hated them all the more for having made him feel so small, so petty and mean, which was all he felt just then. But it wasn't enough to stop him.

Riccardo Bruni

#44. What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover.

Thomas Boswell

#45. I'm looking forward to getting older. I look at people like Peter Gabriel and Sting and even Tom Petty, Don Henley. People that didn't lose it. I'm hopefully going to join that club.

Brandon Flowers

#46. I worked through memories like weeping wounds. I wrote tedious accounts of petty conflicts and read them aloud to people. I removed layer after layer of rot.

Merri Lisa Johnson

#47. acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns.

Jonathan Haidt

#48. We [people] are made separate by the things we do or do not do. Responsibilities of all types curb us. Desire betrays us. No wound is ever truly petty. And there are so many ways to be locked apart from the rest of the world.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#49. Working on a ranch is heaven. It's a hard life, featuring plenty of hard work, and yet at the same time it's an easy life. You're outside all the time. Most days it's just you and the animals. You don't have to deal with people or offices or any petty bullshit. You just do your job.

Chris Kyle

#50. A lot of people think my sarcasm comes from insecurity and defensiveness, but I assure you I'm just being petty and cruel.

Dana Gould

#51. Petty unselfishness," she repeated. "I had got an idea that every one here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they didn't care for, to please people they didn't love; that they never learnt to be sincere - and, what's as bad, never learnt how to enjoy themselves.

E. M. Forster

#52. Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing.

E. M. Forster

#53. If 20,000 people start to sing, you tend to go along with it.

Tom Petty

#54. Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.

Dan Ariely

#55. Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.

Tom Petty

#56. Don't be so petty. Sometimes you have to do business with people you don't like. It doesn't mean you have to be like them or like them.

Donald Trump

#57. The energy of the crowd is insane. Twenty thousand people. It's the biggest jolt of adrenaline. It's very hard to explain. You know the old story about the woman lifting the car off her kid? It's in that realm. You can actually hurt yourself and not know it.

Tom Petty

#58. If there are 10 people there, two or three are going to recognize you.

Richard Petty

#59. I think sometimes maybe you're going to connect with the audience more than others, but the journey is about getting all there is to get out of this group of people.

Tom Petty

#60. There would be very little to dislike in other people if we refused to bring to them all of our own judgements and petty grievances.

Gerald Jampolsky

#61. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

David Foster Wallace

#62. We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at a great shadow.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#63. I just had this New York thing. When I got there, I felt so at home. I said, 'This is where the crazy people go.' It's OK to be yourself in New York. In L.A., it's difficult.

Lori Petty

#64. I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing.

Greta Gerwig

#65. You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here.

Tom Petty

#66. A person can allow a tyrannical world to bully them. One can kowtow to the demands of petty tormentors; blithely accept being the drummer boy for other people's private parade. Alternatively, a person can seek to obtain autonomy over their life.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#67. Never be petty. Do not feed resentments against anyone. I prefer good-hearted sinners to so called good people who are intolerant and devoid of compassion. Being spiritual is to have an open mind, understand and forgive, and be friends with everyone.

Paramahansa Yogananda

#68. Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

A. Powell Davies

#69. You have been reproaching other people all your life - you have been always sure you yourself are right: it is because you have not a mind large enough to see that there is anything better than your own conduct and your own petty aims.

George Eliot

#70. How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?

George Eliot

#71. Never get into the petty habit of measuring yourself worth against other people's net worth.

Robin Sharma

#72. Chief security officer on an OPA ship was a half-assed kind of position, one part cop, one part efficiency expert, and pretty much all den mother to a crew of a thousand people with their own agendas and petty power struggles and opinions on how he should be doing his job better.

James S.A. Corey

#73. "And for God's sake, never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other people's net-worth. As Yogi Ramen preached: 'Every second you spend thinking about someone elses dreams you take time away from your own.'"

Robin Sharma

#74. I think there's a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians, but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty, who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver, but he's also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

John Shelton Reed

#75. It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music.

Tom Petty

#76. There is small merit in mocking goodness, tweaking charity; it is much more comic to deprive people of their petty little existence for no reason at all, for a lark.

Jacques Rigaut

#77. If you're having a bad day already and everybody is just asking you petty questions, it drives people to the edge, or something really small will have a really large effect.

Jess Weixler

#78. People come, people go
Some grow young, some grow cold
I woke up in between
A memory and a dream
So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint
Let's head on down the road
There's somewhere I gotta go
And you don't know how it feels
You don't know how it feels to be me

Tom Petty

#79. People you've known, seemingly forever, may claim to have love for you, but when gossip's tainted tongue whips you - they don't show enough love to weigh your history against false witness. Be that as it may, press forward as the dust settles. Your purpose is much bigger than their paltriness.

T.F. Hodge

#80. And then the petty jealousy of these small prunes-and-prisms places - if you do anything the people you went to school with can't do some of them will never forgive you.

L.M. Montgomery