Ordinary Person Quotes - Page 2

• There are three kinds of friends in the world. An ordinary person sees only who you are; for that you don't need a friend. Then there's a friend who sees in you what you can be. And then there's the real holy Friend, and the presence of this Friend you are already.

  Shlomo Carlebach

  Real, Ordinary, Three

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• Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Truth, Simple, Mind Love

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• My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

  Gene Wilder

  Mistake, Character, Should Have

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• Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

  Edmund Hillary

  Quality, Ordinary, Adventuring

  "Sir Edmund Hillary, First Man to Conquer Mount Everest, Dies at 88", www.foxnews.com. January 10, 2008.

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• 

  I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Ideas, Ordinary, Philosopher

  "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres". Book by Nicolaus Copernicus, 1543.

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• An All-American is an ordinary person with an extraordinary desire to excel. You don't get to the top of the mountain by just dreaming. It's nice to dream. But it's the work ethic and pride that makes you get to that mountain top and that level of success.

  Dick Vitale

  Dream, Nice, Pride

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• Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system, when compared to a Utopia, will pale in comparison. But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires.

  Walter E. Williams

  Miracle, Everyday, Desire

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• Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Average, Stupidity, Politics

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• What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176)

  Studs Terkel

  Air, Talking, People

  "Touch and Go: A Memoir". Book By Studs Terkel, 2007.

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• When I write, I try to represent the ordinary person in the pew, which means that, ironically, I'm qualified to write about prayer by being unqualified!

  Mo Yan

  Prayer, Writing, Mean

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• How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Poetry, Ordinary

  Joseph Campbell (2001). “Thou Art that: Transforming Religious Metaphor”, p.92, New World Library

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• There is a great need for a new approach, new methods and new tools in teaching, man's oldest and most reactionary craft. There is great need for a rapid increase in the productivity of learning. There is, above all, great need for methods that will make the teacher effective and multiply his or her efforts and competence. Teaching is, in fact, the only traditional craft in which we have not yet fashioned the tools that make an ordinary person capable of superior performance. In this respect, teaching is far behind medicine, where the tools first became available a century or more ago.

  Peter Drucker

  Teacher, Teaching, Men

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• Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.

  Haruki Murakami

  War, Thinking, Japan

  "Kafka On The Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, www.newyorker.com. 2002.

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• The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn't reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone.

  Terence McKenna

  Reading, Important, Ordinary

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• Hillary Clinton is now in Iowa. She's spending every waking minute of her day meeting ordinary people, and it's to prepare her for a job in which she will never again meet an ordinary person.

  David Letterman

  Jobs, Iowa, People

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• Take new values: Leave behind a legend to be followed by those who follow you. Be a yogi - don't be an ordinary person.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Ordinary, Legends, Yogi

  "Transitions to a Heart Centered World: Through the Kundalini Yoga and Meditations of Yogi Bhajan". Book by Guru Rattana, p. 107, June 1988.

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• People in the business always say, "You look fabulous." You get that all the time and it kind of goes in one ear and out the other because most of the time they just say that to make you feel good. It's nice when you hear it from an ordinary person and then I appreciate it.

  Heidi Klum

  Nice, People, Appreciate

  "Heidi Klum: Fashion Shows Are Not My Thing". Parade Interview, parade.com. July 10, 2008.

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• The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Attitude, Greatness, Odds

  "The Mechanical Bride : Folklore of Industrial Man" by Marshall McLuhan, (p. 21), 1951.

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• Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others.

  Sayo Masuda

  Dream, Struggle, Ordinary

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• When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Firsts, Ordinary, Doe

  "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Harry Potter fan fiction by Eliezer Yudkowsky, www.hpmor.com. 2010 - 2015.

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• What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Mean, Law, Miracle

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• When you start a company, it's more an art than a science because it's totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that's deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you're an ordinary person and you've just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people.

  Brian Chesky

  Art, People, Trying

  "INSTANT MBA: If You've Just Solved A Problem, You May Have Solved It For Millions" by Patricia Laya, www.businessinsider.com. August 4, 2011.

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• Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Evil, Giving, Ordinary

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2005). “Incubus Dreams: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.308, Penguin

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• Please don't ask me for the actual answer to anything, because I don't have it. Because all I do is look at stuff and ask questions. What can I say? I just think the world's barking mad. Look, I'm not an expert. I'm just an ordinary person.

  Annie Lennox

  Thinking, Mad, Ordinary

  "I would have been perfect as a man". Interview with Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. October 09, 2010.

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• The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far.

  Paulo Coelho

  Giving Up, Order, Soul

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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