“When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.”

— Herbert Hoover

From an article originally published in the February 6, 1949 issue of "This Week" Magazine, from "Addresses Upon the American Road,Volume: Volume 8: 1955-1960." Developed in speech entitled "Moral and Spiritual Recovery from War" presented October 13, 1945, at 75th Anniversary of Wilson College at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. "The Crusade Years, 1933–1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath", edited by George Nash
The Uncommon Man

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and …" by Herbert Hoover?

Herbert Hoover photo

Herbert Hoover 64

31st President of the United States of America 1874–1964

Related quotes

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

“When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/gsens10.txt), preface
Translator unknown. Original publication in French at Amsterdam, 1772, as Le bon sens ("Common Sense"), and often attributed to John Meslier.

“The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“We may not get what we want, when we want. But with a bit of perseverance and a lot of patience, we can get what we need.”

Sarah Strohmeyer (1950) American writer

Source: Sweet Love

“Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“By the term individual I shall mean that in which each of us is peculiarly himself. I shall emphasize not what is common is us, but what is uncommon, and this leads me to a restatement of our question. In considering what is happening to the individual, I shall discuss what in modern civilization is happening to the uncommon in us. Are we becoming more common or more uncommon? Are the common people destroying the uncommon? Is the public self of us crushing out the personal self? Are we being directed more from without than from within? As our group memberships grow larger, do we as persons tend to grow smaller? Do the tendencies of the present day, mass movements, social organization, publicity, public education, emphasize the unique in man, or enhance the dominance of undifferentiated man acting as mass?”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 9

“We want what we can’t have, even when we have no right to demand it.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

“When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it. If we really want to escape this war, we have to stop bringing it with us.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 1

Related topics