Unspoken Norm Quotes

It's the binary of normative/transgressive that's unsustainable, along with the demand that anyone live a life that's all one thing. ~ Maggie Nelson

And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." "Snap ending." Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. ~ Ray Bradbury

He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears. ~ Cassandra Clare

When someone deviates from an accepted norm, they signal a gap in the system. A hole that hasn't been plugged. The danger with exposing a foundation's failings is it opens the door to the possibility that it's a faulty structure altogether and should be torn down and built anew. ~ Romina Garber

One of the very, very exciting things I have found here in L.A. is that no one talks to you about being Scottish. Whereas, if you are in London and you are trying to put films together and be a film-maker, there is a kind of unspoken sense that, if you are Scottish, you have something to overcome or else you cannot really do that project. ~ Peter Capaldi

Symphony starts when you walk together, feel the heart beats and understand the unspoken words. ~ Amit Ray

For those searching for something more than just the norm. We lay it all down, including what others call sanity, for just a few moments on waves larger than life. We do this because we know there is still something greater than all of us. Something that inspires us spiritually. We start going down hill, when we stop taking risks. ~ Laird Hamilton

Last year, Congress gave the Department of Defense the authority to design a new civilian personnel system for its employees as part of the defense authorization bill. ~ Norm Dicks

At every point I am besieged by people who would like me to conform to some social norm of whatever sort of social group they expect me to be a part of. I never have any identification with these social groups. ~ Sean Parker

The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security - national, individual, spiritual - wasn't a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else's lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner.

But it wasn't about price and heritage, it wasn't about that at all.

The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it. ~ Richard Flanagan

If girls are ever going to start to be in bands as the norm rather than as the exception. They need to see people up there that have just started playing. That's something that had gotten lost. I think that's why there are so many great girl punk rock bands now. It's like you have to make up your own rules because the old rules don't apply. You just have to start with what you have. ~ Tobi Vail

There's this unspoken club where you say to each other: Oh God, if they only knew how ordinary I was, they wouldn't be interested. That includes movie stars and politicians. ~ Margot Kidder

We would seldom be deceived by flattery, did our own conceit not promote the delusion. ~ Norm MacDonald

He kissed her, and something moved between them, an unspoken bond pulling them together over what they had gone through and what they would face. But those memoires and thoughts faded away until there was nothing but the sensation of his lips on hers, the exchange of breath and the soft harmony of hearts beating. For one blissful moment they were nothing but feelings and physical sensation.
The moment lasted a very long time. ~ Mindee Arnett

Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one. ~ Esther Perel

Instead of constantly enhancing the norm - forever upping the ante of the 'normal' with new technologies - we should work on enhancing the concept of normal by broadening appreciation of anatomical variation. ~ Alice Dreger

If your eyes hurt after you drink coffee, you have to take the spoon out of the cup. ~ Norm Crosby

In order to deviate successfully, one has to have at least a passing acquaintance with whatever norm one expects to deviate from. ~ Frank Zappa

You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. Thus ~ James K.A. Smith

I was abruptly, entirely sick of it - of secrets and lies and almost-truths, things I half knew and half-suspected, patched-together stories that were never told in order from beginning to end. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement in the world that young girls without money or means were simply too insignificant to be told everything. Even my own father had waited until the very last moment to tell me his whole truth. ~ Alix E. Harrow

Consider how odd it would be if all we knew about elephants had been written by elephants. Would we recognize one? What elephant author would describe--or perhaps even perceive--the features which are common to all elephants? We would find ourselves detecting these from indirect clues; for instance, elephant-naturalists would surely tell us that all other animals suffer from noselessness, which obliges them to use their paws in an unnatural way. [...]So when the human male describes his world he maps its distances from his unspoken natural center of reference, himself. ~ Alice B. Sheldon

He brought the Glock up to shoulder height. He had one up the snout giving him fourteen rounds of influence. ~ Norm Applegate

Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
Those who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I violated, apparently, an unspoken rule that we are supposed to take care of our own. Frankly, if that invites discomfort, I welcome it. I don't think there's enough discomfort in journalism, especially in Washington. ~ Mark Leibovich

Our culture is constantly thrusting gender expectations on all of us. This becomes a problem when it limits people's expressions and identities and perpetuates intolerance of anything that's not the norm. ~ Ashley Mardell

How can an entire nation endure so many long silences and so many unspoken words? ~ Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

I see a generation comprised of all ages, inclusive of men and women, awakening to the extraordinary qualities hidden within. The power to accomplish remarkable feats and live an exceptional life is not defined by an individual's family, education, or occupation; it's a disposition of the heart. Unless it's suppressed, there is an innate desire to rise above the norm. I encourage you to step into the unknown, embrace the divine empowerment, and live your extraordinary life. ~ John Bevere

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better. ~ Geoffrey Canada

I'd say Jon Stewart has remained funny the entire time. Jon always makes it funny first. And he's just, he's talking about serious things, but in a funny way. Other comedians will talk about serious things in a serious way, and then you don't know what's going on. ~ Norm MacDonald

Never strive to be part of the norm. If people think you strange ... CELEBRATE. Normal people try way to hard to please others and never end up pleasing themselves. Be ABnormal. It's more fun. ~ Shelley K. Wall

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. ~ John Holt

You mock those who blindly follow the majority ... turn your attention now to those who are so dedicated to deviating from the norm that they would gladly cease breathing if it were suggested to them that inhalation was a form of conformity; for they deserve just as much scrutiny and ridicule. ~ Demetri Martin

To be told that our child's behavior is "normal" offers little solace when our feelings are badly hurt, or when we worry that hisactions are harmful at the moment or may be injurious to his future. It does not help me as a parent nor lessen my worries when my child drives carelessly, even dangerously, if I am told that this is "normal" behavior for children of his age. I'd much prefer him to deviate from the norm and be a cautious driver! ~ Bruno Bettelheim

Of the rules in this house, spoken and unspoken, ancient and new, religious and secular, visible and invisible - of the mob of rules that controlled a given moment - the one about sandy feet was perhaps the one most strictly enforced. ~ Elizabeth Poliner

A statement on the political responsibility of the critic: the critic must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for, the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present. ~ Homi K. Bhabha

The study of abnormality is one of the main ways that power relations are established in society. When an abnormality and its corresponding norm are defined, somehow it is always the normal person who has the power over the abnormal.
The psychologist tells us about the madmen, the physician about the patients, the criminologist (or the legal theorist, or the politician) talks about the criminal, but we never expect to hear the latter talk about the former - what they have to say has already been ruled irrelevant, because by definition they have no knowledge (but that is code for not wanting them to have any power). ~ Lydia Alix Fillingham

This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin color is the norm and all others deviate from it. ~ Reni Eddo-Lodge

The limitless, lowering sky, the long stretches of motionless empty prairie, the silence, complete right down to the absence of birdsong
who knows what decides a man to leave most of his words unspoken? ~ Larry Watson

Austin's voice was low and gruff with unspoken promises of pleasure. "I need you." He offered me no other explanation, no argument, no rationalizations, just that he needed to be with me, plain and simple. ~ D.T. Dyllin

The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm. ~ Marcel Proust

As Burbank points out, relations between the branches are governed as much by norms and customs as by formal structures. The Constitution permits Congress to impeach and remove federal judges, for example, but the norm is that impeachment is reserved for criminal behavior or serious ethical lapses, and not for judicial rulings with which members of Congress disagree. ~ Linda Greenhouse

Music is the unspoken language that can convey feelings more accurately than talking ever could. ~ Elizabeth Smart

Have you ever been the only person of your own colour or ethnicity in a large group or gathering? It has been said that there are two kinds of white people: those who have never found themselves in a situation where the majority of people around them are not white, and those who have been the only white person in the room. At that moment, for the first time perhaps, they discover what it is really like for the other people in their society, and, metaphorically, for the rest of the world outside the west: to be from a minority, to live as the person who is always in the margins, to be the person who never qualifies as the norm, the person who is not authorized to speak. ~ Robert J.C. Young

Like other ideologies, that of free trade contains unspoken contempt for the individual citizen. It is a despairing response to the complexities of the real world and the politics of despair always replace choice with inevitability. Indeed despair is the natural tone of economists when they are selling their theories of salvation. ~ John Ralston Saul