ENFP

Hunter S. Thompson

Journalist, author of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'

Thompson: "I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right."

Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Thompson: "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."

Thompson: "[Nixon was] a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. ... [He was] absolutely humorless."

Frank Kelly Rich: "There was always a powerful comfort in knowing he was out there somewhere ... guzzling high-octane whiskey and railing against a world amok with complacency and hypocrisy."

Frank Kelly Rich: "Hunter didn't have to seek out adventure, he was adventure."

ENFP

Mark Twain

Journalist and author

Twain: "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."

Twain: "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

Twain: "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

Twain: "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. ... I've done it thousands of times."

Twain: "Who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"

Andrew Carnegie: "The public only knows one side of [Mark Twain] - the amusing part. Little does it suspect that he was a man of strong convictions upon political and social questions and a moralist of no mean order."

ENFP

Oscar Wilde

Playwright

Wilde: "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

Wilde: "America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."

Wilde: "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Wilde: "Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."

Wilde: "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

Wilde: "I can resist everything except temptation."

ENFP

Aldous Huxley

Author of 'Brave New World'

Huxley: "[I am not] the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger."

Huxley: "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life."

Huxley: "Genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."

Huxley: "A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves."

The Guardian: "[He is the] prophet of our present. ... Even his casual asides have a surprising relevance."

ENFP

Umberto Eco

Semiotician and author of 'The Name of the Rose'

Eco: "[In my writing] I know that I have made a caricature out of [others' academic] theories [but] I think that caricatures are frequently good portraits."

Eco: "[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers."

Eco: "Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "Umberto Eco is the owner of a large personal library of almost 30,000 books that he has not read. [To him] read books are far less valuable than unread ones."

ENFP

Salman Rushdie

Author of 'The Satanic Verses', condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini

Rushdie: "'The Satanic Verses' celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs."

Rushdie: "[In literature] I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination of the heart."

Rushdie: "[My work] is a love song to our mongrel selves."

Rushdie: "Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."

ENFP

Julian Assange

Founder of WikiLeaks

Assange: "Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice."

Assange: "Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded."

Assange: "The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable because it ... gives you a sense of mental independence."

Assange: "I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable."

ENFP

Ralph Nader

Leader of the U.S. Green Party and author

Nader: "The only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals."

Nader: "Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way."

Nader: "[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history."

Nader: "The only difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when the big corporations come asking."

ENFP

Anne Frank

Author of 'The Diary of a Young Girl' and Holocaust victim

Frank: "It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

Frank: "During the third class [my teacher had] finally had enough. 'Anne Frank, as punishment for talking [so much] you will write an essay entitled, 'Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Miss Chatterback.''"

Nelson Mandela: "[I] read Anne Frank's diary [while imprisoned] on Robben Island and derived much encouragement from it."

ENFP

Arianna Huffington

Editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post

Huffington: "I'm passionate. I find if I really believe something, I want to put my entire being behind it."

Huffington: "I don't like the idea of [having] a thick skin. I think we [should] be more childlike."

[On why she left the right wing:]
Huffington: "[I] realized that corporate America was never going to step up to the plate and help society's disadvantaged by itself. Other people had to force [them to do] it."

The Observer: "Hurricane Arianna never stops blowing. ... She has been called the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus."

ENFP

Walt Disney

Founder of The Walt Disney Company

Disney: "I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty."

Disney: "The worst of us is not without innocence. ... In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence."

Disney: "[In my work I show] the fun and joy of living ... that laughter is healthy [and] that the human species ... is still reaching for the stars."

Cory Doctorow: "Disney is a delight, someone who ... sweeps those around him along on his dream."

ENFP

Kurt Vonnegut

Author of 'Slaughterhouse-Five'

Vonnegut: "[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think."

Vonnegut: "I don't know about you, but I practice a dis-organized religion. I belong to an un-holy disorder. We call ourselves 'Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.'"

Vonnegut: "The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected."

Philip Trent: "Vonnegut was much like Mark Twain [in] outlook. He loved life and had high ideals which often caused him disappointment."

ENFP

Osho

Mystic

Osho: "It is beautiful that there are three hundred religions in the world; more are needed. ... Each person should have his own religion - there should be as many religions as there are people!"

Osho: "Mohammedans say there is only one God and only one prophet of God, that is Muhammad. Then God seems to be very poor - just ONE prophet?"

Osho: "Ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: It won't allow you to fly."

Osho: "In the West, if the husband is dead, the widow goes back to being 'miss' again. [Under Indian law] this is impossible. Once you have missed, you cannot miss again!"

ENFP

Naomi Klein

Author of 'The Shock Doctrine'

Klein: "Anybody who claims that they know where this whole thing is all going is just lying."

Klein: "Communication is my thing."

Klein: "We are looking to [corporate] brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other."

[Her husband:] "Naomi is a pattern recognizer. ... Her great strength is helping people recognize patterns in the world, because that's the fundamental first step toward changing things."

Rachel Maddow: "['The Shock Doctrine' is] the only book of the last few years in American publishing that I would describe as a mandatory must-read."

ENFP

Michio Kaku

Physicist

Kaku: "To become a theoretical physicist ... you need to have a passionate love affair with the universe."

Kaku: "Scientists are embarrassed by science fiction; they want to distance themselves as much as possible. ... I think there's nothing to be ashamed of [and that] we should take science fiction seriously."

Beth Starbuck: "He has an almost child-like enthusiasm for science."

Colin Blundell: "He has a poetic sensibility."

ENFP

Brian Cox

Physicist

Cox: "What [I'm] attached to are journeys into the unknown and discovering things that are completely unexpected and baffling and surprising."

Cox: "I don't need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find."

Cox: "I enjoy [being on] television because there is an artistic side to my character."

Cox: "Ideas make me emotional."

Jane Fryer: "There's something about his ... poetic descriptions [and] bubbling emotions ... that demystifies science and makes it fascinating."

ENFP

Joseph Campbell

Professor of mythology, author of 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces'

Campbell: "I don't believe in being interested in a subject. ... I believe in being caught by it somehow or other."

Campbell: "[I am not] a specialist, but a generalist. ... [I see] something over here [and] something over there. [And no specialist] has considered ... why this occurs here and also there."

George Lucas: "[With 'Star Wars'] I set out to [create] a modern fairy tale. ... I stumbled across 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces' [and] I began to understand how I could do this."

James Hillman: "No one in our century - not Freud, not Jung, not Thomas Mann ... has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our consciousness."

ENFP

Alan Watts

Writer and speaker on Buddhism

Watts: "Being brought up and 'educated' is a form of hypnosis, brainwashing, and indoctrination that is extremely difficult to survive with one's senses intact."

Watts: "For me, being literate and articulate is a form of judo, of overcoming the [system] by its own method."

Watts: "I made to myself the solemn vow that I would never be an employee or put up with a 'regular job.' ... [And in my life] I have been a free lance, a rolling stone."

Watts: "I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish."

ENFP

Jacques Derrida

Post-structuralist philosopher

Derrida: "I love language as I love life itself!"

Derrida: "I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die."

Mark Lilla: "He is more performance artist than logician. [He has a] flamboyant style - using free association, rhymes and near-rhymes, puns, and maddening digressions."

Barry Smith: "His work consists in no small part of elaborate jokes and puns [like] 'logical phalluses.'"

Julia Wells: "To Derrida, writing is the orphaned 'son' of living speech."

ENFP

Anais Nin

Diarist and author

Nin: "In [me] there's always movement, renewal, surprises. I have never known stagnation."

Nin: "[For me] not even introspection has been a still experience."

Nin: "The poet is the one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive."

Nin: "Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

Nin: "I am an excitable person ... in whom feelings are much stronger [than] reason."

ENFP

Ellen DeGeneres

Talk show host

Ellen: "There's nothing I know for sure, because I know for sure that things change."

Ellen: "I like to try new things because I get bored so easily."

Ellen: "I want people to like me - but not at my expense."

Ellen: "You're not supposed to shove your feelings under the rug."

Ellen: "I care passionately about equal rights [and] animal rights."

ENFP

Katie Couric

Journalist

Couric: "I knew I had to be a journalist because I'm deeply curious about the world."

Couric: "[I am enthusiastic about journalism because] it's a craft that can ... galvanize an often complacent citizenry, and make a difference."

[On criticism of her reporting style:]
Couric: "Some said I lacked gravitas, which I've since decided is Latin for 'testicles.'"

ENFP

Rachel Maddow

Talk show host

Maddow: "I'm all about bringing the bad guy into sharper relief."

Maddow: "Nothing about me wants to write. I reject it like a transplanted organ. ... I find it hard to commit to a sentence."

[On Republican opposition to Obama:]
Maddow: "Congressional Republicans had a collective war-gasm trying to make the president's budget seem scary."

ENFP

Keira Knightley

Actress

Knightley: "The thing I love about acting is getting to change and look at different people in different lives and do different projects."

Knightley: "The most important thing in playing any character is not judging."

Knightley: "I'm ... incredibly open with my mates. Or even people I just meet."

Elle Magazine: "[The] press adores her because she's fun company - a woman with a gift for verbal sparring."

ENFP

Orson Welles

Filmmaker

Welles: "[I have a] fondness for telling stories, like the Arab storytellers on the marketplace. ... I will never grow tired of [telling] stories [and] I make the mistake of thinking that everyone has the same enthusiasm!"

Welles: "I must be sincere towards what I am. ... Experimenting is the only thing that fills me with enthusiasm. ... It is the only sphere where I feel really honest and sincere."

Welles: "I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising."

Jean Cocteau: "He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child. [He is] an active idler and a mad sage."

ENFP

Oliver Stone

Filmmaker

Stone: "[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it."

Stone: "Reagan and Thatcher [came] into office ... and they kicked off an international deterioration ... of values."

Stone: "Nixon was psychologically disturbed."

Stone: "[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record."

Stone: "What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end."

Stone: "I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush."

ENFP

Jack White

(White Stripes)

White: "Passion, for me, is like a shark - it never stops moving."

White: "In all my songs, I take on roles and play characters. It's a unique way to explore ideas and decisions I might not think or make in real life."

ENFP

Gwen Stefani

(No Doubt)

Stefani: "I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys' treehouse. My whole life's been like that."

Stefani: "No one can force me to do something unless I'm passionate about it."

Elizabeth Constance: "Stefani's persona [is] alternately an embrace of little-girl-lost innocence and riot grrrl feminism."

USA Today: "[She has] youthful enthusiasm [and] breathless energy."

ENFP

Robin Williams

Actor and stand-up comedian

Williams: "I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage."

Williams: "The Second Amendment! It says you have the right to bear arms, or the right to arm bears, [to do] whatever ... you want to do!"

Williams: "George W. Bush was in Bigfoot's National Guard unit. [They had the] same number of sightings."

ENFP

Jerry Seinfeld

Actor and stand-up comedian

Seinfeld: "To me, if life boils down to one thing, it's movement. To live is to keep moving."

Seinfeld: "There are more social skills required to talk one-on-one [than to an audience]. You don't have to be socially fluid to talk to two thousand people."

ENFP

Alicia Silverstone

Actress and vegetarian activist

Silverstone: "[I] educate people to be kinder to each other, and to other life-forms. There has been racism, sexism and now there is 'species-ism.' People think that they are better than other creatures."

Silverstone: "One of the things I love best about [my] 'Kind Diet' is that you will actually become part of the solution to our global problems."

ENFP

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Actress

Gellar: "Being outspoken has always gotten me into trouble. I'm just this little thing and then all of a sudden it comes out."

Gellar: "You need to keep your creative juices flowing and keep [your] character interesting."

Gellar: "[My character] Buffy is very similar to me. ... A child in an adult world, sort of trapped between the two."

ENFP

Sharon Stone

Actress

Stone: "I think for a long time people just did not know what to do with me. I looked like a Barbie doll ... and I ... had ideas [that were unconventional and] that didn't make sense."

Stone: "A woman has many faces as she goes through her life. ... We have [experiences], we learn, and we grow; we view life differently, and life views us differently."

ENFP

Sandra Bullock

Actress

Bullock: "I don't ever want to come home saying, 'I should have spoken my mind. I shouldn't have let someone say something that I didn't feel was right.'"

Bullock: "I just want people to admit that there's no one way to live your life."

ENFP

Jenna Elfman

Actress

Elfman: "Since I was born I wanted to entertain and communicate. I wanted to communicate so badly ... My sixth-grade math teacher taped my mouth. I'm still out to get her [for that]. It was very traumatizing!"

Elfman: "I [have] love for others and love for life."

ENFP

Daniel Radcliffe

Actor

Radcliffe: "I have described myself as being 'gently eccentric.'"

Radcliffe: "I might like to be an actor, but there are loads of other things I'm interested in as well, like music and writing. ... I want to keep my options open."

ENFP

James Mercer

(The Shins)

Mercer: "I tend to [have] a lot of ideas but then just leave them in that infant form and kind of move on."

Mercer: "I really [enjoy] working with new people and just sort of the freshness of it. ... I [want] to have those new conversations, musically and otherwise."

Mercer: "I do like talking with friends about big concepts, you know, the stuff that will ruin a party. To me, the party hasn't begun until we're talking about the nonexistence of God."

Mercer: "I'm not really excited about the idea of committing to anything permanently."

ENFP

Carly Rae Jepsen

Singer-songwriter

Jepsen: "Life's too much fun to have it go in just one direction."

Jepsen: "I'm ... free-spirited. Maybe a little too free-spirited."

Jepsen: "What I like is a life that is full of surprises and [that has] no routine."

ENFP

Philippe Jaroussky

Countertenor

Jaroussky: "[I] want to keep something of childhood, the pure innocence."

Jaroussky: "For me it's difficult when someone proposes a project because I'm always enthusiastic [and want to say yes to it even if] it's too much."

Andreas Scholl: "I experienced, for the first time, what other people feel when I heard [Philippe Jaroussky sing]. ... I got goosebumps!"

ENFP

Judit Polgar

Chess champion

[Asked how to teach chess to children:]
Polgar: "Show them your enthusiasm! ... It's important to teach in a playful way!"

Polgar: "Life isn't logical."

[Asked what she thinks of chess journalism:]
Polgar: "Talking more about the personal insights of the players would interest me. ... [Journalists] should be more interested in us!"

Polgar: "It was amazing to meet [Bobby Fischer] in person. Unfortunately that meant I could see his paranoia, and I had real pity for him."

ENFP

Ray Kurzweil

Inventor and author

Kurzweil: "[My projects are] kind of a great adventure. You don't know what you're going to find."

Kurzweil: "Technology builds on science, but it really applies it [in] a way that moves people, and it is a form of magic. ... [It] delights people, or maybe even helps them. ... And that's the exciting aspect of inventing for me."

Kurzweil: "[When I was a child] there was this little island in the middle of our street, an island of untamed bushes where we would create little fantasy worlds."

Kurzweil: "[As a child] I liked to create different worlds."

[Interviewer: "What do you say to young people who ask for your advice?"]
Kurzweil: "Follow your passion."

ENFP

P. J. O'Rourke

Journalist and author

O'Rourke: "Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun."

O'Rourke: "A steady job is at least as deleterious to the spirit of bachelorhood as a steady date."

O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

ENFP

George Galloway

Politician, journalist and author

Galloway: "If I am against [something], I must act against it, using all my powers of persuasion and any platform at my disposal."

Galloway: "I have spent my life on the side of the underdog, whether it's a football game or a political struggle. This can be wrong; the underdog is not always right. ... But ... I cannot help it!"

Galloway: "I believe we can build a world without war or exploitation. ... You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one."

Galloway: "My support for the Palestinian cause didn't arise from a cautious and considered analysis of every relevant fact. I saw a righteous cause and espoused it. [And] my initial instinct was right."

ENFP

Louisa May Alcott

Author of 'Little Women'

Alcott: "My quick tongue is always getting me into trouble."

Alcott: "The jocosity of my nature will gush out when it gets a chance."

[Her cousin:] "[She was] full of spirit and life, impulsive and moody, and at times irritable and nervous."

Clara Gowing: "[She was] a strange combination of kindness ... and daring ... full of energy and ... full of fun. [She always had a] ready wit."

ENFP

Maureen Dowd

Feminist writer and journalist

Dowd: "[When I was young] I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving ... Carrie Bradshaw type."

Dowd: "When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job opening."

Dowd: "Sheryl Sandberg doesn't understand the difference between a social movement and a ... marketing campaign. ... Sandberg has co-opted the vocabulary and romance of a social movement not to sell a cause, but [to sell] herself."

ENFP

Erica Jong

Feminist writer and author of 'Fear of Flying'

Jong: "Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. [But] actually ... it is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage."

Jong: "Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world."

Jong: "[Anais Nin] lived what most women cannot even admit [to themselves] that they dream."

Jong: "[Anais Nin's] diary constitutes one of the landmarks in twentieth century literature."

ENFP

Judith Butler

Post-structuralist philosopher

Butler: "It [is] ethically imperative to speak up and to speak out. ... [I refuse] to keep silent in the face of egregious wrongs."

Butler: "When I was 14 [my teacher] said, 'You are too talkative in class. You talk back, you are not well behaved.' ... I think he thought of me as unserious."

Butler: "[People say:] 'I don't know if [this person is] really Jewish.' [Or:] 'Is that person lesbian? Maybe she had a relationship with a man.' ... I can't live in a world in which identity is being policed in this way!"

[Addressing Occupy Wall Street:]
Butler: "They say that the demands for social equality and economic justice are impossible. ... If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible."

ENFP

Jon Ronson

Journalist, author of 'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

Ronson: "I don't go in [to a project] knowing exactly what I believe and [nor do I want to] tell people [who disagree with me that] they're wrong."

[Asked why he empathized with conspiracy theorists in his book 'Them':]
Ronson: "You don't want to go toward these [conspiracy theorists] and say, 'Well, I just don't believe you. ... I think you've just wasted your time.'"

ENFP

Tim Harford

Journalist, author of 'The Undercover Economist'

Harford: "It's not hard to identify the price-blind customers in Starbucks. They're the ones buying enough latte to bathe Cleopatra."

Harford: "Brilliant scholars with strong, clear views, such as Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes and Paul Krugman, enjoy larger followings than brilliant scholars who deal in doubts and complications, such as Elinor Ostrom and Thomas Schelling."

ENFP

Julian Baggini

Author of popular philosophy books

Baggini: "Many lines of thought can be started from [my] book. But none ends in it."

Baggini: "Don't worry about whether [my] book is serious or not. ... As Wittgenstein said, a serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."

Baggini: "[With] the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ... you get too fixed a view of yourself. You're not actually being true to the way we are, which is that we are more in flux than that."

ENFP

Richard Wiseman

Psychologist and author of '59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute'

Wiseman: "While Freud considered himself a scientist, many of his ideas are in fact completely untesticle."

Wiseman: "[There is a theory] that people may be unconsciously drawn to occupations related to their names. As a professor of psychology called Wiseman, I am in no position to be skeptical."

ENFP

Dave Barry

Journalist and author

Barry: "[Women should get hamsters instead of guys] ... a hamster is much more capable [of commitment than a guy]. ... As soon as [a guy] senses ... true intimacy, he'll ... scamper across the kitchen floor of uncertainty and hide under the refrigerator of non-readiness."

Barry: "Barry: "I'll mature when I'm dead."

Christine Harris: "He's so fast-paced and funny [that] you can barely keep up. His observations touch upon everything [and] he has a fresh view of life."

New York Times: "[He] makes his living by taking prosaic ideas to incongruous extremes [and he is] sillier than just about everyone."

ENFP

Bill Bryson

Author of 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'

Bryson: "[I have contemplated] the question of which [is] worse: To lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored."

Teresa D. Jones: "He has a sense of humor as well as a sense of adventure. He has the ability to make anything entertaining."

Tracy Weiss: "[Bryson has] a penchant for digressing from the main point to muse on various tidbits of history, factoids and trivia. ... His ... witty observations about everything he encounters ... often inspire a hearty chuckle."

ENFP

Stephenie Meyer

Author of 'The Twilight Saga'

Meyer: "I love blurring the lines between the different genres and categories - because in my head, a good book won't fit inside the lines."

[Oprah: "Have you always had a crazy imagination?"]
Meyer: "I did, but I didn't know that about myself. I thought everybody was telling themselves stories all the time. ... Apparently that's not normal."

Meyer: "[When writing my books] I did no plotting or planning, I just let the story tell itself, and my only challenge was typing fast enough to keep up."

Meyer: "I am constantly surprised by my characters when I write - it's really one of my favorite parts. When a character refuses to do what I had planned for him or her, that's when I know that character is really alive."

ENFP

Neil Strauss

Journalist and author of 'The Game', student of Mystery, coauthored the autobiographies of Marilyn Manson and Jenna Jameson

Strauss: "[I never really had] a plan. I just try not to follow any rules. I just follow whatever I'm interested in."

Strauss: "[Looking back] I've had people be rude [to me], but generally it was just a wall, and once I got through it, they turned out to be a great person."

Strauss: "We [might] think someone is [an asshole], but ... if we see them with empathy, in most cases, we realize they're just as insecure as we are, if not more so."

ENFP

Empedocles

Greek philosopher

Empedocles: "Mortals are fallen and punished gods."

Empedocles: "Humans hold true only that which affects them directly. Everyone vainly declares to have found the whole. But that is not for human sight or hearing."

Friedrich Nietzsche: "[Empedocles] was so rich that he could provide dowries for the poorer maidens of his city. He sought a resolution to the differences in wealth between people."

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Innermost his drive [was] the search for equality and [the battle against] inequality."

ENFP

Agathon

Greek playwright, boyfriend of Pausanias

Agathon: "I would rather appraise a person's character before I speak of his deeds. This is always the right way of approaching something."

[When Socrates teased him that he was confident about speaking to crowds, but nervous about speaking to intellectuals:]
Agathon: "Don't think that my head is so full of the public admiration as not to know how much more intimidating a few good judges are than many ordinary ones."

Gordon Craig: "His speeches sing with rhetorical luxury and effeminacy."

ENFP

Aelius Aristides

Graeco-Roman orator

Aristides: "I stumble onto [my] arguments unintentionally, in the course of my speech, rather than because I plan to."

Nicolai Lenz: "When the city of Smyrna was destroyed by an earthquake in 178 AD, Aristides' vivid and poetic description of the destruction moved Marcus Aurelius to tears, and to generously assist the inhabitants in rebuilding their town."

Nicolai Lenz: "Aristides [makes use of mythology] not only in full [but also] in passing allusions, comparisons, examples, asides [and as] illustrative allegories."

Nicolai Lenz: "In the antagonism between myth and logic, Aristides is clearly on the side of myth. But he pulls the myth out of the realm of ornament and validates it; makes it appear germane."

ENFP

Nathaniel Branden

Psychotherapist and author, dated Ayn Rand

Branden: "The idea that a highly rational person is not at the same time a passionately emotional one is completely false. ... In my work as a psychotherapist I tell clients, 'Feel deeply to think clearly.'"

Branden: "[Ayn Rand saw me as] the closest thing on earth to John Galt."

Branden: "Ayn Rand used to say to me, 'I don't know anything about psychology, Nathaniel.' I wish I had taken her more seriously."

ENFP

Mona Eltahawy

Activist for human rights in the Islamic world

Eltahawy: "I have much more in common with a feminist who's fighting patriarchy anywhere than I do with the ultra-orthodox misogynistic zealots of my own religion."

Eltahawy: "I understand what [young Muslim women who wear makeup and sexy clothes along with the Muslim veil] are doing. You can compare it to being punk: You want to do something very visible to show people that, 'I am against whatever you think a young person is. ... And I will not be cowed into the corner.'"

Diane Neeson: "She has got a tattoo of Sekhmet, the fierce ancient Egyptian goddess of retribution on one forearm. A woman with the head of a lion, she was an aggressive, yet protective goddess."

ENFP

Cordelia Fine

Psychologist, author of 'Delusions of Gender'

Fine: "Some people claim that the female brain prioritizes child rearing over a career. ... Sexism, so long as it's dressed up in scientific finery, is still socially acceptable."

Miranda Jacobs: "She really wants you to re-think a lot of your beliefs. ... [She calls] out scientists like Steven Pinker and Simon Baron-Cohen as 'neurosexists' and she is even sardonically funny [while] doing so!"

ENFP

Noreena Hertz

Economist and author of 'The Silent Takeover'

Hertz: "[Politics under our form of capitalism] has become [like] the rows and rows of homogenized clothes, standard T-shirts and cardigans, folded in your local Benetton store."

Hertz: "One of Marx's biggest flaws was trying to find a unifying theory for every aspect of the world. I don't think that's possible."

Bono: "The Hertz brain is hardwired to the Hertz heart."

The Guardian: "She has been dubbed the British Naomi Klein."

ENFP

Sheldon B. Kopp

Psychotherapist and author

Kopp: "One of the reasons why a man should pick a path with heart [is] so that he can find his laughter."

Kopp: "The May fly lives only a few hours ... The eggs the May fly leaves hatch after the parent has died ... What's the point? There is no point. ... Life is mainly simply inevitable."

ENFP

Jeffrey Masson

Author of 'When Elephants Weep'

Masson: "I am used to being considered eccentric."

Masson: "I'm quick. I understand things quickly, and I get bored easily. When I've understood something, I don't want to have it repeated to me a hundred times. ... I was always searching for new things."

Masson: "What one person feels is never entirely available to another. ... [It is uncertain] whether or not anyone understands the landscape of anyone else's inner life."