Stephanie Mills Quotes

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

People are dynamic. They change, and soon as there are enough of you, things change [for a whole society].

Sociologically, large groups of people don't generally have massive changes in their belief instantaneously.

It's not that big a mystery about types. It's not even that big a mystery why so many people are picking up on things now. It's like we were talking about the primitive thing before and all that. Nothing has really changed much. The things that have changed are like we're on the noon now. There are more buildings now. But we're still basically two monkeys sitting here.

We think we can play a small part in the evolution of culture.

Want to know where the action in a culture is? Watch where new language is turning up and where the lawyers collect, usually in that sequence.

how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.

The attitude of other people affects each of us and the attitude of each of us has the capacity to affect all of us.

The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.

I like to think about society as being a flock of birds: There seems to be a common consciousness in different time periods, and the new common consciousness reacts to the old standards.

Nothing is so uncertain or unpredictable as the feelings of a crowd.

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

That's always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they're passionate about. It's that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.

It went beyond idealism and that ridiculous term "activism," which basically means talking about something but doing nothing. . . . We made giving exciting.

Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.

Trading gives you an incredibly intense feeling of what life is all about.

This place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we've all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?

There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

It was the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader.

I went to Seattle as just another geek in the food chain, thinking, "Well, in my own puny little way, I'd rather be a part of history than just sit and watch it on TV." So, the fact that so many people are starting to ask the right questions and rack their brains for solutions does give me hope.

...culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.

Leaders express feelings that other leaders sense.

The masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts, the relatively active, the intermediate and the relatively backward. The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements.