Jessye Norman Quotes

If you make decisions based upon people's reactions or judgments then you make really boring choices.

Most people live their life around what other people do.

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors.

Here's a habit I never thought I'd develop: I gravitate to anything online that's marked 'most popular' or 'most e-mailed.' And I hate myself a little bit every time I do.

I wanted everybody to like me. I thought I was one shuck and jive away in every direction.

Every time I go and shave, I assume there's someone else on the planet shaving. So I say, 'I'm gonna go shave, too.'

I would never want to do something just for the sake of being independent or for the sake of doing big films. I'm always surprised by the material I'm attracted to. And that's how I like it. I like to be surprised.

I'm not a rubber stamp, and people know that. If you can convince me of the merits, you will have my vote every time.

If I have a choice between looking something up and making it up, I'll make it up every time.

I love finding out why people don't love things. And if you ask people why they don't like things, particularly when they get into this sort of culture box, you find out that they're not liking things because of what people are going to think about them, and not because of what the things actually sound like.

I've always done whatever I felt like, even if it was really inadvisable.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

Entrepreneurs are like cats, because they are independent and do their own thing. Although organisations say they like cats, what they really want is sheep that they can herd.

I just live my own life, and I don't read any of the magazines.

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

I don't set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

The masses, the public, is too strict.

It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

Popular opinion is the biggest 'filter' for most people - they don't have to try something if they've already been told it's not cool.

I've had a lot of voices tell me what I should be making. Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn't allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

My mother's mantra was, 'How would it look to the neighbors?' And so you don't do anything because you're worried about how it would look to the neighbors.

Online, you're trying to appeal to everyone and people who you don't know at the same time. So I think, as a side effect, it amplifies the desire for groupthink.