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Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
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There are many published incidents of this as an anonymous proverb since at least 1948, and as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt since at least 1992, but without any citation of an original source. It is also often attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, but though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with "As the unknown sage puts it..."
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Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and little minds discuss people.
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In this form it was quoted as an anonymous epigram in A Guide to Effective Public Speaking (1953) by Lawrence Henry Mouat
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New York times Saturday review of books and art, 1931: ...Wanted, the correct quotation and origin of this expression: Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people...
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Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, small minds discuss personalities.
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Great minds discuss ideas Average minds discuss events Small minds discuss people
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Small minds discuss things Average minds discuss people Great minds discuss ideas

 

Eleanor Roosevelt

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Do not discuss God and virtue. Do not discuss the homeland and its history. Do not discuss the authority and prestige. Do not discuss the family and its moral. Not discuss the glory of work and their duty.

 

Antonio de Oliveira Salazar

 

...Some professor of psychology who has been eavesdropping for years makes the statement that "The best minds discuss ideas; the second in ranking talk about things; while the third group, or the least in mentality, gossip about people"... (Hardware age, Volume 123, 1929)

 

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

The world of underlying form is an unusual object of discussion because it is actually a mode of discussion itself. You discuss things in terms of their immediate appearance or you discuss them in terms of their underlying form, and when you try to discuss these modes of discussion you get involved in what could be called a platform problem. You have no platform from which to discuss them other than the modes themselves.

 

Robert M. Pirsig

 

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. he echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already "know."

 

Eric Hoffer