Quotes about normal (1187 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I am an athlete, and as an athlete it’s normal to keep challenging to do more and more.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Interpretation of a Japanese interview, as quoted in an article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/sports/olympics/yuzuru-hanyu.html of The New York Times, written by Jeré Longman, published 4 January 2018. (Retrieved 10 September 2020)
Other quotes, 2018

“More than anything else, I want to make every day count now. I want to make every single normal day, every ice show, every practice and every competition count. That's what I have been thinking about the most since the day of the earthquake.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Page: 165.
Blue Flame
Original: (ja) 今はとにかく、一日一日を大事にしたいと思う。何気ない日常の一日一日、アイスショーの日々、練習の日々、試合の日々をすべて大切にしたい。そんなことを、あの日を境により強く感じるようになりました。

Thinking

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Powerful , Flowers

“Teachers should be able to help learners to efficiently communicate to other numerical ideas and to make connection with real-life problems in the areas chosen for their eventual career. Training only on subject matter is definitely not going to bring about this expertise. There must be more emphasis on coaching and facilitating techniques. In their normal practices, teachers must see very clearly where each individual learner stands on the learning continuum of that particular development, what problems and difficulties he or she is going to face and what lies ahead on that learning continuum to be walked by the learner. Teachers should be trained to be a master of how to help each and every learn to walk through the learning task. Going through the learning task is a necessary and essential aspect of teacher training but it is not sufficient to make them good and effective teachers.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Teacher

Help , Learning , Communication , Teachers

“I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

People , Understanding , Problem , Personality

“I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

People

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

People

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

People , Funny

“Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!"”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself.
1974 Larry King Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOPkGAtt48

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

Life , Help , Gratitude

“My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

Personality

“This is Annabeth,” Jason said. “Uh, normally she doesn't judo-flip people.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

People

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 32 in the 1992 edition, ISBN 0807014265, Beacon Press

Behavior

“There is no normality in life. Having two houses means that we can get out of each other's hair - which, let's face it, we've both got a lot of”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Of her relationship with Tim Burton
Guardian interview 3 Nov 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/nov/03/1

Life , Housing

“To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.”

Ian Smith book The Great Betrayal

The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith, Africa's Most Controversial Leader
First published in June 1997.

School , Clothes

“Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal.”

Irena Sendler (1910–2008) Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust rescuer

Quoted in "Irena Sendlerowa: Warsaw social worker who rescued thousands from the Jewish ghetto" by Rupert Cornwell in The Independent (14 May 2008)

“So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

World , Thinking

“Normal people do not create art.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

People , Art

“I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Hate , Sleep , Heart , Personality

“It was a challenge to be able to create a character without being able to use one's normal set of expressions. All the rubber and makeup attached to your face left you with only a modest range of facial movements.”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Of her role in Planet of the Apes.
Interview on Cinema.com, 2001 http://www.cinema.com/articles/547/planet-of-the-apes-interview-with-helena-bonham-carter.phtml

“My worst vice is gluttony. I try to keep myself under control because I’m an athlete, but once a week I like to pig out and act like a normal person.”

Gianluigi Buffon (1978) Italian association football player

Buffon, as quoted in Football Italia (07/01/07)

Personality

“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

World , Way , Nature , Parting

“Cause the registration of firearms so that you can eventually confiscate them. Gun control, Communist idea. Lenin said, "One person with a gun can control a hundred people without one." Imagine this scene. You're standing in a bank trying to cash a check. Somebody runs in there, pulls out a gun, and says, "Everybody lay on the floor!" So everybody lies on the floor. Now imagine this scene. Every citizen is armed. The guy runs in the bank, "Lay on the floor!" Everybody else pulls out their guns. You lay on the floor while they all stomp on your head. Every dictator throughout history has wanted gun control. It's just a normal thing. You have to control the guns. Every dictator has wanted that. Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control. Somebody sent me this button as a joke, "Proudly Unarmed". Would you wear this? What does this say to a criminal? "Rob me!"”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Isn't that what it says?
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

People , Guy , Imagination , History

“I was just telling myself to do nothing more and nothing less, and just telling myself to breathe because in that moment I literally felt like I was going to puke, I was so nervous. My normal is good enough, so I don't do anything more or anything less, I just have to do what I normally do.”

Sunisa Lee (2003) American artistic gymnast; first Hmong American Olympic gold medalist

"Suni Lee talks gold medal win, 'cherished' backyard balance beam she trained on as a kid" in Today (30 July 2021) https://www.today.com/news/suni-lee-talks-gold-medal-win-i-still-can-t-t226952

“We came to see Jace. Is he alright?"
"I don't know," Magnus said. "Does he normally just lie on the floor like that without moving?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Lie

“Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 1
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words.

Money , People

“A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.”

Karen Horney (1885–1952) American-German psychoanalyst

Personality

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

Family

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) epilogue.
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

Feeling

“At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.”

George Orwell Why I Write

"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Source: Why I Write
Context: Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.

Exercises , Time

“There is no such thing in life as normal”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Lauretta Bender / Quotes / 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, "Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender, senior psychiatrist, Belleveu hospital Newyork N.Y." http://www.thecomicbooks.com/bender.html
From songs

Sad , Moving On , Life

“I heard some folks saying, "I heard that warm temperatures like this happen every few years--it's normal." I also know that a lot of people are afraid to ask what it is and what causes it… here are some answers and links: Scientific opinion on climate change”

Mike Shinoda (1977) American musician

LP/FM MB 2006

People , Change

“Billie and I got chased through the traffic once in a car. You expect paparazzi to do that, but when it's normal people you start to think the world's gone a bit mad.”

David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor

Radio Times interview (April 2007) http://www.radiotimes.com/content/show-features/doctor-who/david-tennant-interview-2007/

People , World , Cars , Thinking

“Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.”

Jürgen Habermas book Philosophy in a Time of Terror

Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34

“In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel. Up to 1914 you did not need a passport for any country except Russia. The European emigrant, if he could scrape together a few pounds for the passage, simply set sail for America or Australia, and when he got there no questions were asked. In the eighteenth century it had been quite normal and safe to travel in a country with which your own country was at war.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (12 May 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)

War , World , Travel , Question

“As a civil activist, I am one of the thousands of the victims of such horrible tortures. I have come to this conclusion: the aim of solitary confinement is brain-washing, so that prisoners, deprived of normal living conditions, lose their unique human characteristics, their train of thought and ideas, and their physical and psychological health.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Health , Idea , Training

“There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars. Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics — a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage — surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)

People , Nature , Thinking , Appearance

“I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Internet meme commonly attributed to Stallman made by an unknown source.
Misattributed

People , Parting

“All around us there are other women, seemingly not hurt, making small talk, acting normal, which means happy, not discontent, certainly not devastated. Girls are still being socialised not to identify with - feel empathy for - other females: she got hurt because she did x, y, z - I didn’t, so I didn’t get hurt; she’s at fault, I’m not; the punishment fits her crime; blame her, exonerate him. This continuing, culturally applauded socialisation of women not to empathize with other women is a malignant part of the culture of men, dead white ones or not. Women are perceived to be appalling failures when we are sad. Women are pathetic when we are angry. Women are ridiculous when we are militant. Women are unpleasant when we are bitter, no matter what the cause. Women are deranged when women want justice. Women are man-haters when women want accountability and respect from men. Women are trash when women let men do what men want Women are shrews or puritans when we do not.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

‘Suffering and Speech’ in Catherine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (eds) In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings.

Women , Men , Sadness , Justice

“The caressing, melodious tones of humility and flattery never sang in the ears of the clerk Senhor José, these have never had a place in the chromatic scale of feelings normally shown to him.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), p. 8

Feeling

“I'm not concerned with body building; I'm just trying to make people normal human beings.”

Joseph Pilates (1883–1967) German inventor of pilates

People

“By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Suicide

“[Interviewer:] What would you say is the most overrated virtue? [Dworkin:] Compliance and conformity…. [[B]eing] normal is seriously overrated.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Norah Vincent, Sex, Love and Politics, id., p. 40, col. 2

“War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book The Discovery of India

The Discovery of India (1946)
Context: The world of today has achieved much, but for all its declared love for humanity, it has based itself far more on hatred and violence than on the virtues that make one human. War is the negation of truth and humanity. War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people. It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving truth.

War , People

“Listen ladies, we were not born to be a man's play thing. We were not born to serve men... We are not less than or inferior to men. We are life. We give life. We nurture life. I don't understand how that's not a big deal but it should be a big deal. It's a great deal actually. We endure a hell of a lot of pain to keep the cycle of life going. Being treated less than essential, less than precious should not be tolerated. In fact, I don't even understand how it's allowed and normalized.”

Scarlet Jei Saoirse (1984) American singer and actress

Pain , Hell , Understanding , Life

“Don't come back to the pack and be normal for the sake of blending in with others”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

“Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love , Pleasure , Joy , Dependency

“The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Personality

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Happy , Relationship , Happiness

“New lesson, class. Most monsters will vaporize when sliced with a celestial bronze sword. This change is perfectly normal, and will happen to you right now if you don't BACK OFF!" - Percy”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Change

“People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

People , Change

“But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Universe , Time

“Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Understanding , Personality

“I don't think any of us are normal people.”

Wes Anderson (1969) American filmmaker

People , Thinking

“Jace shook his blond head in exasperation.
"You had to make a crazy jail friend, didn't you? You couldn't just count ceiling tiles or tame a pet mouse like normal prisoners do?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

People , Thinking

“Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.”

Martin Cruz Smith (1942) American writer

History , Nature

“It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Drink

“Well, at heart I knew she'd never be a normal woman. And I didn't want her to be one, because what I loved in her were the indomitable and unpredictable aspects of her personality”

Mario Vargas Llosa book The Bad Girl

Source: Travesuras de la niña mala

Love , Heart , Personality

“Normal is the average of deviance.”

Rita Mae Brown book Venus Envy

Venus Envy (1993)

“I am not strange. I am just not normal.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Love , Lovers , Light

“Normally I miss deadlines like a storm trooper misses Jedi.”

Patrick Rothfuss book Unfettered

Source: Unfettered

“They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“Don't try the paranormal until you know what's normal.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Life

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1910s, Prejudices, First Series (1919), Ch. 6, "The New Poetry Movement"
Source: Prejudices: First Series

Time

“For a long while I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madmen, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Stupidity , World , Passion

“Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Life , People

“Even the asexual has a deviation - his asexuality. It is far more abnormal to have a lack of sexual desire (unless illness or old-age, or another valid reason has caused the wane) than it is to be sexually promiscuous. However, if a Satanist chooses sexual sublimination above overt sexual expression, that is entirely his own affair. In many cases of sexual sublimination (or asexuality), any attempt to emancipate himself sexually would prove devastating to the asexual. Asexuals are invariably sexually sublimated by their jobs or hobbies. All the energy and driving interest which would normally be devoted to sexual activity is channeled into other pastimes or into their chosen occupations. If a person favors other interests over sexual activity, it is his right, and no one is justified in condemning him for it. However, the person should at least recognize the fact that this is a sexual sublimation.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Age , Personality

“Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power. He must beware of those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials, which excused on the plea of necessity in wartime, become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

Free Speech in Wartime (October 6, 1917)

War , Support , Time

“I don’t normally comment about my own films. But my judgment of films is excellent, it is better than yours.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

“The Deftmenes are mad and the Dumii are sane, thought Snibril, and that's just the same as being mad except that it's quieter. If only you could mix them together, you'd end up with normal people.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

People , Madness

“During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.… The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Manufacturing Consent, lecture at the University of Wisconsin (15 March 1989) https://chomsky.info/19890315/.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

People , Democracy , Understanding

“The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter. […] There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary, circumstances, there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. […] Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest investor.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life , Truth , Justice , Law

“You can’t believe something like that is happening to you; meeting the President of Ireland and the spectacle of the parade. And everyone is so nice. They all feel like they know you. That’s the nice thing about being in something that’s as universally recognised as Star Wars. Parents normally tell kids ‘Don’t talk to strangers’, but everyone thinks they know me, wherever I go.
I embrace being the more Obi-Wan like character, because that’s the natural progression of life.
There was a period after Return of the Jedi when Star Wars had not come back. These movies are timeless, not dated by their cars or fashions. So, you have these fans who are parents with young children who have just seen Star Wars for the first time and think we made it two weeks ago. The parents say, ‘Look who it is, it’s Luke Skywalker!’ And there I am at 50, and the child is aghast. ‘What happened to this guy, he really let himself go!’ It’s natural and good to see the ageing process. So at least now, when they see me, it’s OK because they’ve seen me in the current film rather than thinking about me in my 20s.”

Mark Hamill (1951) American actor, voice actor, producer, director, and writer

6 April 2018 interview with Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mark-hamill-interview-star-wars-last-jedi-luke-skywalker-leaving-a8292541.html

Life , War , Children , Age

“Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

People , Way , Business , Cheating

“We are not teaching some ritualistic process, that "You become Hindu. You become Christian. You become Muhammadan." We are simply teaching, "You try to love God. You have forgotten God. You have declared, 'God is dead.' These are all nonsense. God is there. You are here. You are suffering because you have forgotten God. You try to love God. Your normal life will come back. You will be happy."”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

This is Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 4.7-10 - Los Angeles, (6 January 1969) Vanipedia http://vaniquotes.org/wiki/You_have_forgotten_God._You_have_declared,_%27God_is_dead.%27_These_are_all_nonsense._God_is_there._You_are_here._You_are_suffering_because_you_have_forgotten_God._You_try_to_love_God._Your_normal_life_will_come_back._You_will_be_happy._This_is_KC_movement
Quotes from other Sources

Love , Life , God , Suffering

“When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where to-day it flows in shallows, like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, to-morrow it will flow richly and fully.”

Mikhail Sholokhov book And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don (1934)

Life

“A normal chap, a man who likes creating things. A good worker in the morning, and a man who likes enjoying himself in the afternoon.”

Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916–1993) Italian industrialist

In response to the question, "So, Mr. Lamborghini, in short what type of man are you?" asked by a television reporter, broadcast on RAI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YLcUtwN38U&feature=player_embedded

“The impression that infra-human mammals more or less confine themselves to heterosexual activities is a distortion of the fact which appears to have originated in a man-made philosophy, rather than in specific observations of mammalian behavior. Biologists and psychologists who have accepted the doctrine that the only natural function of sex is reproduction, have simply ignored the existence of sexual activity which is not reproductive. They have assumed that heterosexual responses are a part of an animal's innate, "instinctive" equipment, and that all other types of sexual activity represent "perversions" of the "normal instincts". Such interpretations are, however, mystical. They do not originate in our knowledge of the physiology of sexual response (Chapter 15), and can be maintained only if one assumes that sexual function is in some fashion divorced from the physiologic processes which control other functions of the animal body.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Sex , Behavior , Fashion , Nature

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Love , Life , People , Nature

“The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

People , Truth , Success

“I had one normal job and I actually liked it. I worked at this place called Sparkles Service and I cleaned guys out. I was like 11. I can clean toilet bowls too!”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Canada.com http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/movie-guide/story.html?id=6184358b-2f14-44ee-9e34-a1b0132b8934 (November 7, 2008)

Guy

“"Education to personality" has become a pedagogical ideal that turns its back upon the standardized-the collective and normal-human being. It thus fittingly recognizes the historical fact that the great, liberating deeds of world history have come from leading personalities and never from the inert mass that is secondary at all times and needs a demagogue if it is to move at all. The paean of the Italian nation is addressed to the personality of the Duce, and dirges of other nations lament the absence of great leaders.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Lecture, The Inner Voice, Kulturbund, Vienna (1932); quoted in The Integration of Personality, Farrar & Rinehart, NY (1939)

World , Education , History , Time

“There are today an increasing number of people whose awareness is, in the strict sense of the phrase, without a focus; and the techniques which have transformed the framework of daily life for such people at such a prodigious pace – I am thinking particularly of the cinema and the radio – are making a most powerful contribution towards this defocalizing process. … The human creature under normal conditions finds his bearings in relation to other people, and also to physical objects, that are not only close to him in space but also linked to him by a feeling of intimacy. Of this feeling of intimacy, I would say that in itself it tends to create a focus for human awareness. One might go farther and speak of a kind of constellation, at once material and spiritual, which under normal conditions assembles itself around each human being. … This kind of constellation around the individual life is, in a great many countries, in process of dissolution.”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), pp. 146-147

Life , People , Feeling , Thinking

“Joy and happiness are the indicators of balance in a human machine, just as a change in the familiar hum in a mechanism immediately indicates an abnormalcy to the practiced ear of the mechanic. An inner joyousness, amounting to ecstasy, is the normal condition of the genius mind. Any lack of that joyousness develops body-destroying toxins. That inner ecstasy of the mind is the secret fountain of perpetual youth and strength in any man. He who finds it finds omnipotence and omniscience.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Secret , Youth , Change , Joy

“Our children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it, and that'll be very soon in our public schools all across the state, beginning in kindergarten.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Prophetic Views Behind The News
KKMS 980-AM
Radio
2004-03-06, hosted by Jan Markell
on what would happen if a proposed Minnesota state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage failed to pass
2000s

Children , School , Nature , Learning

“If you are normal, I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life”

Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author

My Pink Half of the Drainpipe
My Pink Half of the Drainpipe

Life

“I believe with all my heart in athletics, in sport, and have always done as much thereof as my limited capacity and my numerous duties would permit; but I believe in bodily vigor chiefly because I believe in the spirit that lies back of it. If a boy can not go into athletics because he is not physically able to, that does not count in the least against him. He may be just as much of a man in after life as if he could, because it is not physical address but the moral quality behind it which really counts. But if he has the physical ability and keeps out because he is afraid, because he is lazy, because he is a mollycoddle, then I haven't any use for him. If he has not the right spirit, the spirit which makes him scorn self-indulgence, timidity and mere ease, that is if he has not the spirit which normally stands at the base of physical hardihood, physical prowess, then that boy does not amount to much, and he is not ordinarily going to amount to much in after life. Of course, there are people with special abilities so great as to outweigh even defects like timidity and laziness, but the man who makes the Republic what it is, if he has not courage, the capacity to show prowess, the desire for hardihood; if he has not the scorn of mere ease, the scorn of pain, the scorn of discomfort (all of them qualities that go to make a man's worth on an eleven or a nine or an eight); if he has not something of that sort in him then the lack is so great that it must be amply atoned for, more than amply atoned for, in other ways, or his usefulness to the community will be small. So I believe heartily in physical prowess, in the sports that go to make physical prowess. I believe in them not only because of the amusement and pleasure they bring, but because I think they are useful. Yet I think you had a great deal better never go into them than to go into them with the idea that they are the chief end even of school or college; still more of life.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)

Life , Pain , People , Pleasure

“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?… We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)

Life , Men , Pain , Peace

“I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm just a normal person.”

Magnus Carlsen (1990) Norwegian chess player

Meet Magnus Carlsen, The New King of Chess - TIME, Eben Harrell Friday, Dec. 25, 2009 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948809,00.html

Personality

“There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Child Psychology and Nonsense (15 October 1921)

People , World , Education , Way

“Care for us and accept us - we are all human beings. We are normal. We have hands. We have feet. We can walk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else - don't be afraid of us - we are all the same!”

Nkosi Johnson (1989–2001) South African child AIDS activist

Closing lines of his address to the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, in July 2000.
Source: Nkosi's speech at Nkosi's Haven http://www.nkosi.iafrica.com/index.html

“The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 121
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O império supremo é o do Imperador que abdica de toda a vida normal, dos outros homens, em quem o cuidado da supremacia não pesa como um fardo de jóias.

Life , Men

“As for the general idea of what one would do if certain of death in an hour—I fancy most persons in normal health tend to sentimentalise and romanticise a bit about it. For my part—as a realist beyond the age of theatricalism and naive beliefs—I feel quite certain that my own known last hour would be spent quite prosaically in writing instructions for the disposition of certain books, manuscripts, heirlooms, and other possessions. Such a task would—in view of the mental stress—take at least an hour—and it would be the most useful thing I could do before dropping off into oblivion. If I did finish ahead of time, I'd probably spend the residual minutes getting a last look at something closely associated with my earliest memories—a picture, a library table, an 1895 Farmer's Almanack, a small music-box I used to play with at 2 ½, or some kindred symbol—completing a psychological circle in a spirit half of humour and half of whimsical sentimentality. Then—nothingness, as before Aug. 20, 1890.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to a round-robin letter-writing group called "the Coryciani" (14 July 1936), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S.T. Joshi, p. 339
Non-Fiction, Letters

Death , Health , Books , Age

“No anthropologist of standing insists on the uniformly advanced evolution of the Nordic as compared with that of other Caucasian and Mongolian races. As a matter of fact, it is freely conceded that the Mediterranean race turns out a higher percentage of the aesthetically sensitive and that the Semitic groups excel in sharp, precise intellectation. It may be, too, that the Mongolian excels in aesthetick capacity and normality of philosophical adjustment. What, then, is the secret of pro-Nordicism among those who hold these views? Simply this—that ours is a Nordic culture, and that the roots of that culture are so inextricably tangled in the national standards, perspectives, traditions, memories, instincts, peculiarities, and physical aspects of the Nordic stream that no other influences are fitted to mingle in our fabric. We don't despise the French in France or Quebec, but we don't want them grabbing our territory and creating foreign islands like Woonsocket and Fall River. The fact of this uniqueness of every separate culture-stream—this dependence of instinctive likes and dislikes, natural methods, unconscious appraisals, etc., etc., on the physical and historical attributes of a single race—is to obvious to be ignored except by empty theorists.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (18 January 1931), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 587
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Secret , Nature , Memory , Dependency