E. B. White - People Quotes

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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.

E. B. White
The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but a mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation's pulse, you can't be sure that the nation hasn't just run up a flight of stairs.

E. B. White
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

E. B. White
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it is highly unprofitable to most people.

E. B. White
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who enjoy bird walks enjoys theirs.

E. B. White
It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.

E. B. White
The delegate from Patagonia spoke up. 'I fear that the wild flag, one for all, will prove an unpopular idea.'
'It will, undoubtedly,' sighed the Chinese delegate. 'But now that there are only a couple of hundred people on earth, even the word "unpopular" loses most of its meaning. At this juncture we might conceivably act in a sensible, rather than a popular, manner.' And he produced eighty-two more shoeboxes and handed a wild flag to each delegate, bowing ceremoniously.
Next day the convention broke up and the delegates returned to their homes, marveling at what they had accomplished in so short a time. And that is the end of our dream.

E. B. White
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

E. B. White
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

E. B. White
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

E. B. White
People are animals, and the city is full of people in strange plumage.

E. B. White