Ordinary People Quotes - Page 8

• I had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

  Sara Paretsky

  Summer, New York, Children

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian citizenship in order to buy television stations in the United States, which is symptomatic of the way Murdoch operates. Everything is for sale, including his birthright. The Mirror is not read by soccer hooligans. It's read by ordinary people of this country. That comment is simply patronizing. But to be criticized by the Moonies and Murdoch in one breath is really just a fine moment for me.

  John Pilger

  Soccer, Country, Order

  Source: progressive.org

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• We have reached a stage where governments and political processes have been hijacked by the corporate world. Corporations can within five hours influence the vote in the U.S. Congress. They can influence the entire voting patterns of the Indian Parliament. Ordinary people who put governments in power might want to go in a different direction. I call this the phenomenon of the inverted state, where the state is no longer accountable to the people. The state only serves the interests of corporations.

  Vandana Shiva

  Government, People, Political

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

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• The genres change but all of my stories feature ordinary people thrown into frightening, life-altering situations.

  Brian Pinkerton

  People, Ordinary, Stories

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

  John Gimlette

  Phones, Views, People

  Source: www.identitytheory.com

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• Some banks won’t make it. Other banks are going to make sure that we strengthen. All deposits are going to be safe for ordinary people, but we’re going to have to bring out some of these bad assets.

  Barack Obama

  Bad Ass, People, Ordinary

  "Interview with President Barack Obama". "NBC Today Show" with Matt Lauer, archives.nbclearn.com. February 2, 2009.

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• I wrote a call to the contemporary Muslim conscience, saying to the ordinary people that we might not like the video or the cartoons, but that violence certainly isn't the right answer. I don't think laws are going to solve the problem.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Thinking, Law, People

  "'You want my reaction? You get my silence.'". Interview with Lars Mensel, Clemens Lukitsch, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. November 19, 2012.

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• The West, both the elites (consciously) and ordinary people (sub-consciously), want Russia to go to hell; to disappear, drown, explode. It is because Russia is once again defending humanism all over the world.

  Andre Vltchek

  Russia, People, West

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I also recognise that the mandate was given by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people joining in the political process.

  Jeremy Corbyn

  Joining In, People, Political

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. I think that's a powerful message in this time of political strife.

  Viola Davis

  Powerful, Hero, Thinking

  Source: aalbc.com

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• I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand.

  Hassan Blasim

  Writing, Symbolism, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ... Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.

  Tony Blair

  Gun, Law, Western Values

  Address to Congress Accepting Congressional Gold Medal, delivered 17 July 2003, Joint Session of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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• I will focus on smoking in movies and with the amount of time that I have left in the world, I will do the best I can to stop smoking in movies and also to help people stop smoking, just normal ordinary people who may need help.

  Joe Eszterhas

  People, Focus, Smoking

  Transcript to Oct. 9 at Cleveland State University, www.nbcnews.com. October 9, 2002.

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• It's just this epidemic unimportance, this pervasive feeling that just about everything is "no big deal," that drives these ordinary people to those fast-food joints, there to try to fill with carbohydrates the spiritual and emotional emptiness gnawing inside them.

  Ron Loewinsohn

  Spiritual, Emotional, Epidemics

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• I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations.... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.

  Ray Metzker

  Beautiful, Average, People

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• I believe that photographs should be simple technically, and easy to look at. They shouldn't be directed at other photographers; their point is to make ordinary people react - to laugh, or to see something they hadn't taken in before, or to be touched. But not to wince, I think.

  Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon

  Believe, Taken, Simple

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• Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know.

  Peter Kreeft

  Clever, Believe, Light

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• Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it's a sign that you've got an extraordinary destiny--something greater than you could've imagined.

  C. S. Lewis

  Destiny, People, Extraordinary Things

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• Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

  Sharon Olds

  People, Feelings, Ordinary

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• I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.

  Rebecca Solnit

  People, Ordinary, Influence

  Source: therumpus.net

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• What I am trying to say is that it is not without any value. The value of copies is that they can direct us towards the original. I was recently at the Louvre Museum and I was filming people who were viewing the Mona Lisa. I noticed the number of ordinary people, astonished, mouths agape, standing still for long stretches looking at the work, and I wondered, "Where does this come from? Are these people all art connoisseurs?" They are like me; through the years, we've seen this work in our schoolbooks or art history books, but when we stand before the original, we hold our breath.

  Abbas Kiarostami

  Art, Book, Years

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• When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.

  Paul Hawken

  Optimistic, Odds, Order

  "Paul Hawken: programming a new operating system for civilization" by James Epstein-Reeves and Ellen Weinreb, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2013.

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• The Superclass tries to promote its values. Ordinary people complain of divine injustice, they envy power, and it pains them to see others having fun. They don’t understand that no one is having fun, that everyone is worried and insecure, and that what the jewels, cars, and fat wallets conceal is a huge inferiority complex.

  Paulo Coelho

  Fun, Pain, Insecure

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• I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

  Jeanette Winterson

  People, Devil, Monsters

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.105, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• "You do not really love me — you love nobody. Is that not true?" "Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can — that is their secret."

  Hermann Hesse

  Art, Practice, People

  "Siddhartha".

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