Sunday, June 2, 2013 – Popularity
Avoid popularity if you would have peace. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate. ~ Orson Welles
When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. ~ Edmund Burke
Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit. ~ William Penn
Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character. ~ Horace Greeley
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet. ~ Dave Barry
The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity. ~ Max Beerbohm
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny. ~ David Hume
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no. ~ George Savile
Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow? ~ Albert Einstein
The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it. ~ Will Rogers
If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective. ~ Brian Eno
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. ~ William S. Burroughs
Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag. ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden
His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to hide his contempt for his companions’ stupidity. They complained that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be conceited about. He was developing a sense of humour, and found that he had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he said them because they amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt, and was much offended when he found that his victims regarded him with active dislike. The humiliations he suffered when he first went to school had caused in him a shrinking from his fellows which he could never entirely overcome; he remained shy and silent. But though he did everything to alienate the sympathy of other boys he longed with all his heart for the popularity which to some was so easily accorded. These from his distance he admired extravagantly; and though he was inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others, though he made little jokes at their expense, he would have given anything to change places with them. ~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
I figured it is always better to be unpopular by your own choice. ~ Tom Upton, Freaky Jules
To be unpopular, you must look the part. Remember four words: plastic flowered swim cap. ~ Jennifer Ziegler, How Not to Be Popular
Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked. ~ Yogi Berra
I’m shopping around for something to do that no one will like. ~ Jerry Garcia
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, for he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. ~ Oliver Goldsmith
Popularity? It’s glory’s small change. ~ Victor Hugo
Popularity is exhausting. The life of the party almost always winds up in a corner with an overcoat over him. ~ Wilkson Mizner
Everything popular is wrong. ~ Oscar Wilde
Popularity comes from allowing yourself to be bored by people while pretending to enjoy it. ~ Karol Newlin
Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost. ~ John Adams
Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right. ~ Mark Twain
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul. ~ Emma Goldman
I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish. ~ Edith Sitwell
My esoteric doctrine is, that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy… but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it. ~ Lord Melbourne
Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain. ~ Colin Wilson
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Ain’t no man can avoid being average, but there ain’t no man got to be common. ~ Satchel Paige
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity. ~ Christopher Morley
It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. ~ Edith Wharton
Just Above Sunset 