Popularity Quotes

“That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933]”
― Cyril Connolly

“When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“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

“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”
― John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies

“I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.”
― Michael Moorcock, Elric: The Stealer of Souls

“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

“Really Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded”
― Yogi Berra

“Do not yearn to be popular; be exquisite. Do not desire to be famous; be loved. Do not take pride in being expected; be palpable, unmistakable.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson

“It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.”
― Aristophanes, The Knights

“How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I figured it is always better to be unpopular by your own choice.”
― Tom Upton, Vanished

“It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“No popularity exists when tragedy strikes. All that's left are human hearts and love and ache. We all love each other, deep down, and when we see another soul in pain we can't help but hurt too.”
― Maya Van Wagenen, Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek

“I'm just Phil from Rossendale. And now people are screaming for me 'cause I make YouTube videos - it's just crazy!”
― Phil Lester

“Get over it, Roo. If you have friends who actually like you, you’re popular enough.”
― E. Lockhart, Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver

“Popularity is teenage heroin.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“A psychiatrist once told me early in treatment, “Stop trying to make me like you,” and what a sobering and welcome smack in the face that statement was. Yet somehow, every day of my life is still a campaign for popularity, or better yet, a crowded funeral.”
― John Waters

“High School: Oh, man. This is where boys and girls go from tweens to teens and become complicated and cruel. Girls play sick mind games; boys try to pull each other's penises off and throw them in the bushes. If you can, buy the most expensive jeans in a two-hundred-mile radius of your town and wear them on your first day. If anyone asks how you could afford them say that your father is the president of Ashton Kutcher. When they are like, 'Ashton Kutcher has a president?' answer, 'Yes.' Everyone will be in awe of you and you won't have to go through a lot of pain and cat fights.”
― Eugene Mirman, The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life

“You don't seek power or popularity. You simply ask, is the thing right in itself? If it is, then I must do it, no matter the cost.”
― J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: The Original Screenplay

“Hanging with people who make you feel unappreciated, for the mere sake of appearing to be popular, is the loneliest place to be.”
― Ellen J. Barrier

“He was highly spoken of, everybody knew; but nobody knew who had spoken highly of him…”
― Margaret Oliphant, The Rector

“So here's the deal:

I speak up in class, I get sent to office. Megan speaks up in class, she's a "strong, assertive model student."I post a few flyers saying that the vending machines on school property are a sign that our school has sold out to corporate-industrial establishment, I get (what else?) Saturday detention. Megan starts a campaign to serve local foods in the lunchroom (oh, and can we please maybe get rid of the soda machines?) and the local newspaper does a write-up about her.
She's like me, only not. Not like me at all. She's the golden girl and I'm...tarnished.
So forgive me if I hate her a little.”
― Katie Alender, Bad Girls Don't Die

“So remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debitures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen”
― Janis Ian