“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.”
Statement made in 1935 or earlier, as quoted in The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern (1937) by Burton Egbert Stevenson
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Harry Emerson Fosdick40
American pastor 1878–1969Related quotes
“There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.”
Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist
Source: UnWholly
“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary”
Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Context: The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life … it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.
Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician
Imam's Sahife, vol. 5, p. 133. (17 December 1978)
Foreign policy
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”
Jimmy Johnson (1928) American Chicago blues guitarist and singer
“The most ordinary things could be made extraordinary.”
Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One
Variant: Even the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary simply by doing it with the right people.
Source: The Lucky One