“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
Bernard M. Baruch, American financier and statesman
Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt.
One-Liner Wednesday — Be Who You Are
This, That, and the Other 
I loved seeing this quote again. Great choice.
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Very wise
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True that
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100%
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I think, sometimes, statements like these sound good and encouraging to a regular person. But go into the realm of the super wealthy (I do mean super wealthy rather than the simply upwardly mobile) — and who do you think they mean doesn’t matter? We have fallen, in America probably including our neighbor Canada as well as Europe and potentially other Christian nations, to believe (even when agnostic or atheist) that we are surrounded and propelled by a sense of morality. Consider the billionaire who thinks he is the victim (his cohort is put upon): “I’m just going to be myself; stop oppressing me.” 😭
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Nevertheless, here’s a different contextualization.
https://genius.com/Sting-englishman-in-new-york-lyrics
Chorus
I’m an alien,
I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman
in New York
I’m an alien,
I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman
in New York
[Verse 3] If “manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself, no matter what they say
……….
{ Don’t miss the further lyrics, lower on the page. }
Perhaps a different context, although I’m not sure.
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Genius Annotation
…
“Englishman in New York” was released as a single in 1988. The song’s main subject was Quentin Crisp, a British writer. Sting said this about the song in the liner notes for Nothing Like the Sun:
I wrote “Englishman in New York for a friend of mine who moved from London to New York in his early seventies to a small rented apartment in the Bowery at a time in his life when most people have settled down forever. He once told me over dinner that he looked forward to receiving his naturalization papers so that he could commit a crime and not be deported. “What kind of crime?” I asked anxiously. “Oh, something glamorous, non-violent, with a dash of style” he replied. “Crime is so rarely glamorous these days.”
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_S._Crisp
For the gay personality, see Quentin Crisp.
This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification.
Quentin S. Crisp (born 1972) is a British writer and publisher of supernatural fiction. Unlike the better-known personality of the same name, this Quentin Crisp was given the name at birth but, being younger, must use his middle initial to disambiguate. Originally from North Devon, Crisp now lives in London.
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🤯 I just looked into this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch (I took a link from here.)
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate[1] hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, and the promotion of the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.[2][3][4][5][6]
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This is cute, though: Park bench statesman
Baruch was well-known, and often walked or sat in Washington, D.C’s Lafayette Park and in New York City’s Central Park. It was not uncommon for him to discuss government affairs with other people while sitting on a park bench. This became his most famous characteristic.[citation needed] and was also referenced in parody in the 1949 Bugs Bunny animated short, Rebel Rabbit.
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Absolutely!
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Oh I have always loved this!
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Great quote!
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