Petty Quotes

What I find curious is that I ever became a writer at all. I grew up in the South Bronx, the land of poverty and petty hoodlums.

I’ve spent most of my life playing with Tom Petty, and he’s a damn good songwriter.

Girls, to me, growing up were very, very petty and didn’t want me to succeed and didn’t want the best for me.

I’ve grown up around that sort of petty crime, getting into trouble and trying to get out of it. What’s funny is my dad was an inspector in the police, so I was known as the grass.

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.

The man of petty ambition if invited to dinner will be eager to be set next his host.

If you look at things that really affect people’s lives – sport, the arts, charities – they were always at the back of the queue for government money – health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas – sports, the arts, the lottery – got relatively petty cash from the government.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that’s their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.

It’s a petty thing, but I wouldn’t join the Scouts when I was a kid, ’cause you had to swear allegiance to the queen. I’m just not a royalist. I think it’s idiotic, a hereditary principle.

I get so tired listening to one million dollars here, one million dollars there, it’s so petty.

When you can’t see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away.

I’ve seen people get robbed, seen people get shot with my own eyes, for pointless petty crimes.

I’m fascinated by the capacity to be able to do harm. I struggle every day with the ability of people to do evil. Not just the big things – the petty things that people do in order to make someone feel small, when it’s so easy to do, and it hurts so much.

The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, ‘culture.’

Everything is possible; we just need to be hopeful and think of the world from a human perspective. The world is so small compared to the universe, so we shouldn’t fight for petty things.

The supposedly petty sexual harassment that so many women have to endure, from Hollywood studios to the factory floor at Ford, is a national outrage that needs to end. Period.

Class is considerate of others. It knows that good manners is nothing more than a series of petty sacrifices.

As I get older, I find myself getting angrier and angrier. Doubtless, change itself, not to mention physical decline and inevitable petty tragedies of disappointed expectations, would have made for resentment in any event; but I used to be a passive schoolboy, my negative impulses turned obediently inward.

I mean, sometimes it’s really good to listen to something like Tom Petty, that’s purely blissed out. But that’s not me.

I’ve never been in a ‘Twitter fight,’ though I’ve witnessed my fair share. I do enjoy vigorous and informed debate, but the benefit is lost when the exchange becomes a series of petty ad hominem attacks. I don’t see much value in it.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman’s quality.

The Hindu marriage may be described as the union of two families. In this union, there is no room for petty ambitions and personal ego-trips. What is involved is love for the entire family that one is marrying into.

A chief petty officer taught me shorthand, which got me promoted to yeoman first class.

The petty logic of political parties cannot be allowed to stifle the French people’s legitimate aspirations to safety and liberty.

I think there’s a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians, but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty, who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver, but he’s also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can’t win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.

To be able to always have a super sense of who I was and my own real identity and be petty and seem informed and always thinking in thoughts would be great.

We need a new Hank Williams, a new Jimmy Webb. We need new writers, a new Tom Petty. We need people that write what they feel and what they see – things that are relevant.

If I could tell every Trump supporter two things, it would be to travel and read a history book. Look beyond yourselves; look at how petty the morals you uphold seem when you realize we are not the only ones.

For a long time, I’ve loved the kind of characters who are boastful yet petty. I was originally a gag manga artist, after all.

My life is full of drama, and I don’t have time to worry about something as petty as what I look like.

There’s no room for petty grievances in politics.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.

My big ambition was to be Richard Petty.

I’m a big fan of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, they’re my two favorites.

Making dance music is a spiritual thing. It’s about being completely absorbed by rhythm and vibration, so much so that the petty stuff of life stops mattering.

I don’t really sweat the petty things.

The me you see on stage is largely a construct, based on me at my worst, my most annoying, my most petty, and my most patronizing.

I’m real petty. I remember everything like an elephant.

The road to some of the darkest moments of history have been paved with the rants of petty demagogues against ethnic minorities for centuries.

It’s like Richard Petty always said, ‘Racing isn’t the job. That’s where we get away from our job.’ That’s where we go out and have fun and get away from the madness. No one can bother you in there. There’s no phones, no interviews – it’s just you, driving.

It’s funny, I often think about how, if we were all placed in an apocalyptic situation, you’d realize quickly how stupid, petty things just don’t matter anymore. Who you love is who you love, and it doesn’t matter.

Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty. Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the center of attention in her father’s inauguration.

Immersing myself in Shakespeare’s plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant, plain-spoken professor changed my life: It opened up the great questions; it put my petty problems into perspective. It got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me in the library late into the night.

Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

Tom Petty sent me this amazing 12-string Rickenbacker, and ‘Not for You’ was the first time I used it. It was like a Christmas present. One day, it just showed up at my door. I called him up and thanked him.

From Richard Petty to Andy Murstein, everybody at RPM is standing behind me and believing in me on track and also following me through this journey off track and letting me find my way and find my voice in standing up for what’s right.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

Whether you’re Michael Waltrip or Jeff Gordon or Richard Petty, you can’t be the Daytona 500 champion without it having an impact on people around you. When I say that, I mean the race fans. They want to congratulate you for winning the biggest race of the year. It has changed people’s perception of me.

Too often, we see wedge politics and petty rhetoric used to belittle adversaries and inflame partisan divisions.

The first thing they gave me at ‘Sports Illustrated’ was a first-class air card. ‘And oh, by the way, there’s the petty cash drawer,’ they told me. ‘Take a few thousand dollars for expenses.’

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.

Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life.

When I was growing up in Salford, I was always in trouble. It was stuff like petty crime and all sorts of things.

Apartheid – both petty and grand – is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

I have two little boys, and I want them to feel like this is the nation that I know. That this is the nation that isn’t petty.

Divorce is a 50-50 thing, and it can be a number of petty things that finally drive you out of your mind.

To be spiritual means you have cosmic ambitions. You want to know not just the whole creation but the Creator and the source of creation as well. To be material means you have petty ambitions of owning a house – or 10 houses – or a whole apartment building.

I liked teaching, but the bureaucracy of academia and the petty intrigue… It wasn’t a good fit. Once I admitted that myself, that I didn’t like academia, I was ready to try TV.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were really great. I saw them live in the ’90s; they were really, really good. The music is great, and the musicians are amazing.

As leaders, we need to rise above petty politics and lead, rather than follow, the various interests and pressure groups in our respective countries.

The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.

Petty thievery is a more profitable job than pool hustling, which it resembles, requires far less talent and training, and is equally devoid of promise.

Petty things don’t bother me as much as they used to.

I believe in what Richard Petty Motorsports is doing and their desire to win races.

My dad was a laborer. And he used to get up at 5:30 every morning. He worked for 50 years of his life, in all weathers for, by showbiz standards, petty cash. I remind myself of that when I feel a little bit spoiled or hard done by.

We’re quick to complain about racism, sexism, homophobia, but it’s not as bad as people make out. If we’re going to be more cohesive, we have to be more relaxed about petty incidents and not find insult where none exists.

The Band was always famous for its retirements; we’d go and play and get a little petty cash together, and then not see each other till it was time to fill our pockets up again.

Amazon is famously run by studying and responding to its own data; yet when it comes to promotions, decisions are often subjective and guided by human emotions and petty political dynamics.

The distance between Don Quixote and the petty bourgeois victim of advertising is not so great as romanticism would have us believe.

Tom Petty was one of my guitar students; I knew Duane, and Stephen and I had a band. When he left, Bernie Leadon moved to Gainesville. His father was a nuclear physicist who was sent to the University of Florida to start their nuclear research facility, so he and I became friends.

If the world’s nations can set aside their petty bickering over religion, politics, and territory, certainly I can ‘get that Olympic Spirit’ and rise above my prejudices.

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

‘The Cauliflower’ is full of these bizarre anecdotes, some of them petty, others moving or whimsical, as its many characters try to make sense of the universe in which they live – a universe strange, febrile, and utterly unique.

I’m an old rock and roll buff. I love Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.

I never said finish the Congress, because the opposition is needed… I do not have such petty imaginations.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

I’m looking forward to getting older. I look at people like Peter Gabriel and Sting and even Tom Petty, Don Henley. People that didn’t lose it. I’m hopefully going to join that club.

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

We’re not going to pay attention to the silliness and the petty comments. And quite frankly, women have joined me in this effort, and so it’s not about appearances. It’s about effectiveness.

The name of the show was ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ not ‘Philip and Viv of Bel-Air.’ If you didn’t want to walk away from the best job in the world over a petty issue, you accepted the way it was.

This is a dream come true to race for ‘The King’ Richard Petty Motorsports, the iconic No. 43 and for all the fans and partners that have and continue to support this team.

When you go back and listen to 30 years of Tom Petty records, they are pretty consistent. I love that.

‘Star Trek’ works for me because it deals with the petty issues of humankind.

Girlhood is often marred by schoolgirl cruelty, a grim rite of passage in which parents sometimes cruelly collude. Mothers and fathers must take a stand against petty or protracted hostility between girls.

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.

Trump’s executive order on refugees, his endless petty feuds – with allies, with judges, with Arnold Schwarzenegger – his constant stream of up-is-down and down-is-up fabrications is outrageous.

Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

In an interview with a journalist, you look petty taking the pot shot but in a slick ad you can really do damage – including unfair damage – from afar. It is not that much different than waging a war by a drone than by hand-to-hand combat.

When you see a Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty or Jackson Browne show, the impression you get is that you’d love to have a beer with them. That’s the image they project.

Like every other industry or institution, the journalism world is populated by the petty and fearful, in addition to the courageous and brilliant.