Ordinary People Quotes

How many cities of forty thousand, which is the population of Burlington, have a foreign policy? Well, we did. During my tenure as mayor we made the point that excessive spending on the military and unnecessary wars meant fewer resources to address the needs of ordinary people. Somewhere in the Reagan Library, or wherever these things are kept, there is a letter from the mayor of Burlington opposing the U.S. funding of contras in Nicaragua. The letter stated, "Stop the war against the people of Nicaragua. Use our tax dollars to feed the hungry and house the homeless. Stop killing the innocent people of Nicaragua." As ~ Bernie Sanders

One of the plagues of our day is that it's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of massive violence, poverty and injustice around the globe...One of the greatest needs in this country is for us to have some hope, and to feel empowered that as ordinary people we can make a difference. ~ David Hartsough

What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognise their names and faces but know almost nothing else about them? ~ Alan Alda

She has never understood, nor been able to relate to a herd mentality. She doesn't get along with followers and avoids the bandwagon. She marches to her own tune and does it alone. She's despised by the weak-minded and respected by the strong. She ruffles the feathers of the flock because she champion's the defenseless and pick's on the mob. Does she wish she could not give a damn and live an ordinary life surrounded by nodding and needy ordinary people? At times ... but she'd be bored out of her mind when she's never bored alone, and because of that she's patient because a couple of times in a lifetime she's lucky enough to come across a memorable, magnetic and remarkable person - one worth knowing, even if just for the brevity of a conversation. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

A few dozen other people lingered in the arena. Some were in groups, some were pointedly solo and eyeing everyone else as potential enemies. Some looked like ordinary people you'd run into at the mall. Others practically had "Yes, I want to join a fanatical vampire-hating group" stamped across their foreheads. ~ Richelle Mead

Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don't think art is elite or mysterious. ~ Ai Weiwei

Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose socialism. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Just like other ordinary people, I want to have a happy family. ~ Lee Byung-hun

War is the price of change.'
'And it's ordinary people who pay it, peasants like me. Never men like you. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Why be usual when you are unique? Why be average when you can be awesome? Why be ordinary when you are an original? You were born to be a THRILLER! ~ Rodney Walker

…I interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is Prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often to you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes – well, maybe seven. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often. Many of those I talked to experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves. Does this sound familiar? (pp. 14/Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?) ~ Philip Yancey

Valentine's Day is devoted to love. Why don't we have a day devoted to hatred? The raw, visceral hatred that is felt every hour of the day by ordinary people, but is repressed for reasons of social order. I think it would be very cathartic, and it would certainly make for an exciting six o'clock news. ~ George Carlin

Great quotes do not come from great people. They come from ordinary people who think differently. ~ Ismat Ahmed Shaikh

The final result wouldn't be decided by the presidents or within the mighty kingdoms or the great capitals of the world. It was the ordinary people that had the power to save the world. ~ Chris Stewart

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Advocates of Strict Father morality show such a resentment of illegitimate authority, not just toward meddling parents but toward any moral authority seen to be illegitimately meddling in their lives. The federal government is a common target. We regularly hear arguments that the federal government doesn't know what's best for people, that people know what's best for themselves, and that the government is not acting in the interests of ordinary people. Therefore, federal authority should be shifted to local governments or eliminated altogether. It ~ George Lakoff

Ordinary people don't know how much books can mean to someone who's cooped up. ~ Anne Frank

Change starts with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The path to the extraordinary is open to anybody at any time. ~ Larry Brilliant

So what have I learned that is helpful? Well, if you are white, like I am, you can't get rid of the privilege you have, but you can use it for good. Don't say I don't even notice race! like it's a positive thing. Instead, recognize that differences between people make it harder for some to cross a finish line, and create fair paths to success for everyone that accommodate those differences. Educate yourself. If you think someone's voice is being ignored, tell others to listen. If your friend makes a racist joke, call him out on it, instead of just going along with it. If the two former skinheads I met can have such a complete change of heart, I feel confident that ordinary people can, too. ~ Jodi Picoult

You can start from the ordinary bizzare to the extraordinary incredible ~ Richmond Akhigbe

Ordinary people have an extremely important role to play in fighting climate change. Not only can you make your home more energy efficient, drive less, and eat more local food - you can also tell your leaders to take climate action. ~ Frances Beinecke

It's about recognizing that the great movements and moments in history laid on the backs of ordinary people who simply chose to do extraordinary things. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

They were ghosts, I suppose, the procession of the dead. They weren't pale kings and pale maidens, they were work-worn men and women - perfectly ordinary people, except for being dead. You'd never mistake them for living people. You couldn't quite see through them, but they were even more drained of colour than everything else, and they weren't quite as solid as they ought to be. One of the men I recognised. He had been sitting in Fedw Hir near Grampar making blubbing sounds with his mouth. Now he strode along easily with a spring in his step. His face was grave and composed, he was a man with dignity and purpose. He bent and picked up one of my oak leaves from the path and offered it like a ticket at the cinema as he passed between the two trees. I didn't see anyone take it. I couldn't see into the darkness at all. ~ Jo Walton

Regimes of racial segregation were not disestablished because of the work of leaders and presidents and legislators, but rather because of the fact that ordinary people adopted a critical stance in the way in which they perceived their relationship to reality. ~ Angela Y. Davis

Now ordinary people are born forwards in Time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live, just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a W if you were allowed to look at them forwards, instead of backwards and inside out. But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of Time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having second sight.
~Merlin ~ T.H. White

When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting. ~ C.S. Lewis

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man. ~ Anton Chekhov

Even the dumber parts of our government are not run by idiots. These are ordinary people like us, doing a job. By and large, they're trying to do it as well as they can. Or at least as often as people in the private sector try to do as well as they can. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Twitter is the people's tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources. ~ Ai Weiwei

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people. ~ Aleister Crowley

September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. ~ Stanley Milgram

Facing another day, with ordinary callings to ordinary people all around us is much more difficult than chasing my own dreams that I have envisioned for the grand story of my life. ~ Michael S. Horton

After a time Ara had to do her chores, leaving me on the porch with a fresh infusion of tea to drink, her garden to look at, and her words to consider.
Not that I got very far. There were too many questions. Like: Where did those guards go? Azmus had overcome one, but I didn't remember having seen any more. Then there were the unlocked doors. The one to my cell could be explained away, but not the outside one. If there was a conspiracy, was Azmus behind it? Or someone else--and if so, who; and more importantly, to what end?
It was just possible that those dashing aristos had contrived my escape for a game, just as a cruel cat will play with a mouse before the kill. Their well-publicized bet could certainly account for that. The wager would also serve very nicely as a warning to ordinary people not to interfere with their prey, I thought narrowly.
Which meant that if I'd left any clue to my trail, I had better move on. Soon. ~ Sherwood Smith

I'm drawn to stories about ordinary people who get tangled up in an extraordinary event or idea or emotion. I'm not saying I don't love films about super-people or super-doctors, but my preference is for stories about how we get through this life, what it is to be human, because I'm always struggling with it myself. ~ Sophie Okonedo

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people. ~ Stephen Hawking

Great men and women are not extraordinary people who do extraordinary things. They are ordinary people who do ordinary things with integrity. ~ Jayce O'Neal

Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results predictably. ~ Michael Gerber

Ordinary people can never fall over the walls, because they never dare climb high enough to see what is beyond the walls. ~ B. Traven

On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag for the ordinary people who are not quite sure that they are getting it right. ~ Rachel Joyce

Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age. ~ Marlon Brando

We want to see a struggle. We want to see people falling over but getting themselves back up on their feet, and that's what's extraordinary- ordinary people and their struggle. There's nothing as interesting as real life out your window. You walk down the street for half an hour, I'll give you half an hour of drama. ~ Ricky Gervais

His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people? ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Over a bowl of noodles [the younger Cantonese man] waxed eloquent on the subject of mantras. 'Ordinary people, Ah Jon, use mantras as spells to win good fortune or ward off disease and other evils. Perhaps they are right to do so, for the mantras are often successful, but I do not ask you to believe that. What I beg you to believe is that they are of the greatest help in altering states of consciousness. They do this by making your mind stay still instead of chasing after thoughts.'

He went on to explain that, being devoid of meaning, they do not promote conceptual thought as prayers, invocations and so forth are apt to do; and that, as each mantra has a mysterious correspondence (he could not explain what kind of correspondence) with the various potentialities embedded deeply in our consciousness […] it could cause one to snap into a state otherwise hard to reach. I do not remember his actual words, but I do remember that he was the first to voice an idea which was later to be abundantly confirmed by my own experience. […] he went on to say that to use meaningful words in any kind of religious practice is useless, since words encourage dualistic thought which hinders the mind from entering upon a truly spiritual state. His last words […] were: 'People who pray with words are just beginners. Don't do it!' Several passengers who understood English glanced at him as though they thought him a bit mad and I myself was quite taken aback by his un-Chinese vehemence, but ~ John Blofeld

The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers. ~ Margaret Heffernan

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? ~ Leo Tolstoy

Live in harmony with each other. Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don't think you know it all! - Romans 12:16 ~ Gary Chapman

Playing sports is a good thing for ordinary people; sport played at the professional level is not good for your health. It pushes your body to limits that human beings are not naturally equipped to handle. ========== ~ Anonymous

The history of the human race is the history of ordinary people who have overcome their fears and accomplished extraordinary things. ~ Brian Tracy

Harold says one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to Facts. It ~ C.S. Lewis

Studies show that when ordinary people do something wrong - break a promise, commit a murder - they usually fold it into a narrative that denies or at least diminishes their guilt. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

Like her mother Lauren used to say, books were solid proof that ordinary people were capable of creating magic. ~ Melissa Hill

Don't assume you have to be extraordinary to be used by God. You don't have to have exceptional gifts, talents, abilities, or connections. God specializes in using ordinary people whose limitations and weaknesses make them ideal showcases for His greatness and glory. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Great leadership makes ordinary people into extraordinary people. ~ Jeffrey Fry

I like ordinary. People only wish for adventure until they're stuck in the middle of one. Haven't you ever seen The Fellowship of the Ring? ~ Kendare Blake

You know, heroes are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things in life. ~ Dave Winfield

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don't think art is elite or mysterious. I don't think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention. ~ Ai Weiwei

Readily people do not accept any ordinary to behave like an extraordinary unless and until some extraordinary but preferably wealthy approves him to be not ordinary. ~ Anuj

Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune - really anything, everything - to their advantage. But this crisis in front of you? You're wasting it feeling sorry for yourself, feeling tired or disappointed. You forget: Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave. We ~ Ryan Holiday

Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren't the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary," Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. "Sydney Tar Ponds," Mearth added, "I've had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I've forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult ... very sad ... to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren't always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn't you agree?"
"No," Alecto told her. "I think you're insane. ~ Rebecca McNutt

When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up. ~ Cornel West

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. ~ Oscar Wilde

Ordinary people knock on doors,
warriors break them down,
but sages enter through the window. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Better to be ordinary people in a superior country than to be a president in a disreputable country. ~ Khem Veasna

Sometimes ordinary people are destined for extraordinary lives. ~ Dannika Dark

There are heroes and, emphatically, heroines enough in this history. Yielding to the temptation to focus on their courage, however, may miss the point. Part of the legacy of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark is a faith that ordinary people who learn to believe in themselves are capable of extraordinary acts, or better, of acts that seem extraordinary to us precisely because we have such an impoverished sense of the capabilities of ordinary people. ~ Charles M. Payne

God loves to use ordinary people just like you and me, faults and all, to do extraordinary things. ~ Joel Osteen

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There was one world, of flesh and blood and bone, but also another - a deeper reality that ordinary people could glimpse only fleetingly, if at all. A world of souls, both the living and the dead, in which time and space, memory and desire, existed in a purely fluid state, the way they did in dreams. ~ Justin Cronin

Fresh from the rarefied environments of Harvard, the author says he purposefully took journalism jobs in small southern towns so that he could learn the art of conversation with ordinary people. Is this gift for listening and for conversation, it seems, that allowed him to produce textured historical narratives of grand impact. ~ David Halberstam

Fashion is only complete when it is worn by ordinary people who exist now, managing their lives, loving and grieving. ~ Yohji Yamamoto

This closing chapter takes up three problems about authoritative reason giving that earlier chapters have raised but not resolved: what makes reasons credible, how people who work with specialized sorts of reason giving can make their reasons accessible to people outside their specialties, and what particular problems social scientists face when it comes to communicating their reasons, and reconciling them with the reasons that we as ordinary people give for our actions. Governmental commissions, we will see, offer just one of many ways to broadcast reasons. We will also see that the credibility of reasons always depends on the relation between speaker and audience, in part because giving of reasons always says something about the relation itself. ~ Charles Tilly

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The challenge for Muslims in America is to respect the fears of ordinary people while resisting the exploitation of those fears by political parties, lobbies and sectors of the media. To meet this challenge, Muslims must reassess their own involvement, behavior and contributions in American society. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It's disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available rewards. It's like being told that atoms are mostly empty and wondering how they can bear weight. Yet the bargaining of interests in a society can produce highly stable institutions; perhaps that's also true of the internal interests created by a person's rewards. ~ George Ainslie

De Sade says you must commit crimes. In using the word crime we're adopting the consensus term, though among ourselves we would not describe any of our actions as such. We need the universally valid norm to get a kick out of our own extremeness. We are monsters, even if we disguise ourselves as ordinary people. We are the children of ordinary people, but we are not content with that. Inwardly we are consumed with wickedness, outwardly we are grammar school pupils. ~ Elfriede Jelinek

I think people would be surprised to discover that their challenges and struggles are not too dissimilar to us, average ordinary people, we're all looking for essentially the same thing and I think that's faith and hope and love and meaning and of course satisfaction, peace, joy. ~ Judah Smith

Will hadn't seen him come into the room. He realized that the mysterious figure must have slipped in through a side door while everyone's attention was on the Craftmasters as they made their entrance. Now he stood behind the Baron's chair and slightly to one side, dressed in his usual brown and gray clothes and wrapped in his long, mottled gray and green Ranger's cloak. Halt was an unnerving person. He had a habit of coming up on you when you least expected it - and you never heard his approach. The superstitious villagers believed that Rangers practiced a form of magic that made them invisible to ordinary people. Will wasn't sure if he believed that - but he wasn't sure he disbelieved it either. He wondered why Halt was here today. He wasn't recognized as one of the Craftmasters and, as far as Will knew, he hadn't attended a Choosing session prior to this one. ~ John Flanagan

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality? ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote. It now seems completely clear to me, looking back, that when a government talks about "fighting for Freedom" almost every Freedom you can imagine disappears for ordinary people and expands limitlessly for a handful of people in power. ~ Alexandra Fuller

Well what can you expect?' I retorted. 'Those people are, as you say, simple and uneducated. Wasn't it Marx who said that peasants are like sacks of potatoes? Is it surprising that their lives are filled with gods and goddesses and demons?'
She glanced at me again. 'You really do not care for ordinary people, do you?'
The imputation of elitism made me bridle. 'Why you're quite wrong!' I said. 'I consider myself a person of the left. As a student I was a Maoist fellow traveller. I've always stood in solidarity with peasants and workers.'
'Oh yes, certo!' she said, suppressing a giggle. 'I knew many Maoists and fellow travellers in Italy. They had every regard for the bellies and bodies of poor people - but not, I think, for what is in their heads. ~ Amitav Ghosh

Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people. ~ Brian Tracy

There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appearance, fairly well educated, not stupid, rather good-hearted even, and at the same time to possess no talent, no special quality, no eccentricity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be precisely "like everyone else."
One is rich, but not so rich as Rothschild; of a good family, but one which has never distinguished itself in any way; of decent appearance, but an appearance expressive of very little; well educated, but without knowing what to do with that education; one is intelligent, but without one's own ideas; one is good-hearted, but without greatness of soul, and so on and so forth. There are a great number of such people in the world, far more than it appears. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If governments were kind, they'd realize that conficts are resolved and wars prevented not by armies but by ordinary people. ~ Scilla Elworthy

Pop culture writing is about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Literature is about extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances. ~ Stephen King

But I've been paying attention for a while now, and I think there's also actual ordinary. People who never wonder if this is all there is, and have never gnashed their teeth at what a raw deal this whole thing inevitably becomes at some point or another, sooner or later. ~ Caroline Zancan

It's common knowledge that the "church" is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own. ~ David Eddings

Scientists are a cold-blooded bunch. Standing by while innocent people are killed, while the power you so generously donated is twisted and warped by the fragile little minds of the ordinary people. I can't believe you thought your plan would ever work. - Darquesse, to Argeddion ~ Derek Landy

I was 19 when I got my first passport as an adult. I had moved from California to New York City and was living out of a suitcase, staying with friends. I'd just finished filming my first movie, 'Ordinary People,' but I didn't know whether acting was what I wanted to do with my life. ~ Timothy Hutton

Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges. ~ Jon Ronson

We are not a TV station that only concentrate on those who are always under light. We are not a TV station for celebrities and for grand politicians and superstars. We are a TV station for the ordinary person. The normal people, ordinary people in the Arab world sees Al Jazeera as their voice. ~ Wadah Khanfar

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Liberals don't believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. If they promoted that, there'd be no need for liberalism. ~ Rush Limbaugh

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

Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things. ~ Terry Pratchett

By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time. ~ Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Our long-postponed day of financial reckoning appears finally to be at hand, and it may well turn out to be something we should not wish away. When ordinary people are brought to understand that the state is unable to ensure their material well-being, children will again be perceived as long term assets: necessary replacements for the Social Security swindle and state-seized or inflation eroded private pension funds rather than obstacles to greater consumption. Amid the collapse of political finance, we may be able to regain a sense of the timeless purpose of labor and wealth. Our children may learn to find the satisfaction in the simple daily fact of family survival that we were unable to find in all our economic overreaching. ~ F. Roger Devlin

I spent a lot of time protecting myself. I mean, I've met a lot of extraordinary people over the years - and I just wish I had been able to open myself up to them more. ~ Diane Keaton

People want you to be ordinary. ~ Robert Crais

God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family. ~ Neal A. Maxwell