John Turner Quotes

You learn more about a person from the people around that person than you do from the person themselves. We all have our own ideas of who we are that may or may not be justified, and you can really find out a heck of a lot more accurately from the people around an individual.

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.

I've always tried to figure out what people think of themselves and what they think they're projecting.

If I'm in a room full of intense people, I'm pretty normal. If I'm in a room full of people who aren't, maybe I'm intense. I don't know, I don't think of it that way.

I know, for a fact, that I'm a very different person on my own than I am with someone else. We are different with each other. These things are constantly adjusted. And that's true of humans. That's not just true of famous people.

Part of the reason I wrote the book was I wanted to understand for myself why such good people let themselves get treated so badly.

It's odd to look out there and see a bunch of Mini-Mes," says Williams. "You're wondering what possessed them to do such a thing . . . It sort of does a reverse psychology on you. You'd think you'd be like 'Hey, all these people want to look like me. I feel pretty cool.' But actually it makes you feel more self aware and I'm not really fond of that.

People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.

Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.

If you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

We sometimes differ more widely from ourselves than we do from others.

Sometimes people's reactions tell more about themselves.

When there's 100 people around you can't really forget yourself.

No matter where you go, you always see yourself in the rearview mirror.

I suppose we don't rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment-a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.

In one sense, the Stanford prison study is more like a Greek drama than a traditional experiment, in that we have humanity, represented by a bunch of good people, pitted against an evil-producing situation. The question is, does the goodness of the people overwhelm the bad situation, or does the bad situation overwhelm the good people?

Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

I don't do anything to try to change people's perceptions of me. I tend to think that's sort of an ego driven thing.

I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society's image of old people and 'us' as we know and feel ourselves to be.

I work alone. Humans are incredible, because when you come alone, they will receive you, they accept you, they protect you, they give you all things that you need, and they teach you all things you must know. When you come with two persons or three persons, you have a group in front of them. They don't discuss with the new persons what is important to them.

I don't feel that I'm a role model. I'm just me. If people want to look up to me then that's their business. I'm not perfect and I don't consider myself to be a role model. But to be honest, I'd much rather my kids look up to me than look up to some rock star who gets off jail more times than is even funny.

The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humour, curiosity, and self-importance.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.