Ordinary Quotes - Page 15

• That's why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors - found the courage to keep it alive.

  Barack Obama

  Teacher, 4th Of July, Men

  Democratic National Convention Presidential Nomination Acceptance, delivered 28 August 2008, INVESCO Field at Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado

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• What a person says and does in ordinary moments when when no one is looking reveals more about true character than grand actions taken while in the spotlight. Our true character is revealed by normal, consistent, everyday attitudes and behavior, not by self-conscious words or deeds or rare acts of moral courage.

  Michael Josephson

  Attitude, Taken, Character

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• The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Science, Understanding

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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• Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C.
  And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
  Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone?
  God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.

  Paul Simon

  Life, Flower, Love You

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• I'm proof that great things can happen to ordinary people if they work hard and never give up.

  Orel Hershiser

  Sports, Perseverance, Giving Up

  Orel Hershiser (1990). “Out of the Blue”, Jove Books

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• Appreciation of life itself, becoming suddenly aware of the miracle of being alive, on this planet, can turn what we call ordinary life into a miracle. We come awake to such a realization when we recognize our connection to a spiritual dimension.

  Dan Wakefield

  Spiritual, Appreciation, Miracle

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• Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

  John C. Bogle

  Life, Motivational, Perseverance

  John C. Bogle (2010). “Common Sense on Mutual Funds”, p.112, John Wiley & Sons

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• When something out of the ordinary happens, it is ridiculous to say that it is a mystery or a portent of something to come... the mystery is created in (their) minds, and by waiting for disaster, it is from their very minds that it occurs.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  War, Waiting, Mind

  Miyamoto Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Inazo Nitobe (2010). “Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.”, p.64, Bottom of the Hill

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• It is impossible to live the life of a disciple without definite times of secret prayer. You will find that the place to enter in is in your business, as you walk along the streets, in the ordinary ways of life, when no one dreams you are praying, and the reward comes openly, a revival here, a blessing there.

  Oswald Chambers

  Dream, Prayer, Live Life

  Oswald Chambers (2016). “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: God's Character and the Believer's Conduct”, p.30, Discovery House

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• Just as in prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His attention, but He ours, so when we fail to hear His voice, it is not because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things, and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to bear God speaking in His ordinary tone without any special accent.

  Charles Brent

  Prayer, Order, Voice

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• If Christians were Christians, there would be no anti-Semitism. Jesus was a Jew. There is nothing that the ordinary Christian so dislikes to remember as this awkward historical fact.

  John Haynes Holmes

  Christian, Jesus, Justice

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• All classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage.

  Alain LeRoy Locke

  Spiritual, Epic, Class

  Alain LeRoy Locke (1983). “Crit Temp Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture”, Scholarly Title

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• There is nothing that does not get easier through cultivation. The buddhas of the past started out as ordinary beings. They were not buddhas in the beginning. The path to buddhahood is traversed only through gradually developing more and more courage and DETERMINATION -then it is attained.

  Dalai Lama

  Determination, Past, Doe

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• Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

  Brian Tracy

  Motivational, Determination, Decision

  FaceBook post by Brian Tracy from Apr 27, 2014

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• What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

  Sun Tzu

  Wise, Art, War

  The Art of War (6th century b.c.).

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• It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation.

  J. William Fulbright

  Educational, Pride, Sacrifice

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• These phantoms speak with human voices — friendly, vapor- like shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Wall, Airplane, Voice

  "The Spirit of St. Louis".

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• The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Educational, Fall, Ignorance

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• When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.

  Horace

  Latin, Voice, Together

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• If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does them day in and day out.

  Chuck Noll

  Inspirational, Leadership, Sports

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• [T]he strike is inherently dangerous to the rich, and to the corporations who have brought this country to her knees, because it is the only defense the ordinary citizen has.

  Keith Olbermann

  Country, Struggle, Defense

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• There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.

  William Halsey

  Greatness, Men, Volunteer

  "Fictional character: Fleet Adm. William F. Halsey Jr". "The Gallant Hours", 1960.

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• It is your enemies who keep you straight. For real use one active, sneering enemy is worth two ordinary friends.

  E. W. Howe

  Hate, Real, Two

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• There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.

  Mother Teresa

  Kindness, Hunger For Love, People

  Mother Teresa (2001). “Mother Teresa: Essential Writings”

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• In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

  Diane Ackerman

  Fun, Pain, Drama

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “Deep Play”, p.23, Vintage

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