Quotes about normalization
page 12

“Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Nigel Farage attacked over Romanians 'slur' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27459923 BBC News (18 May 2014) 2014

Perfection, Personality, People

“You can be assured of this. There will be no increase in the standard or other rates of income tax under the Labour Government so long as normal peacetime conditions continue.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Speech in Newcastle (28 September 1959) during the general election campaign, quoted in The Times (29 September 1959), p. 10
Leader of the Labour Party

“I was not surprised when he died. No, I was not surprised. I don’t know why I say that, it’s just something that I feel from Chris, he was so complicated. He always struggled with mundanity. He was really in another dimension, and for him to be normal was really hard.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Ann Wilson on not being surprised by Chris Cornell's death, YouTube, November 15, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqcg8Tla1nU,

Feeling

“Awareness and children — Awareness will be respected in the home and in the school as a sacred, God given gift. Awareness is the mother of creation. Awareness can never be divided, nor imposed. Textbooks cannot describe it, because there is no beginning nor end to it. Awareness can only be experienced. To inspire a very young child to look for God is undivine, because in this way you create isms. Awareness is a seed in all creation and in every individual. If you allow the child to have his natural growth, you will allow his awareness to grow; the child will enjoy normal life and will not be dogmatic. In awareness you do not possess children, yet they come closer to you. Even now, children as young as nine or 10 are raising funds to feed the hungry. Imagine what they will be like when they are tomorrow’s citizens. Children can do it. Politicians cannot do it.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

School, Home, God, Imagination

“I had been a vegetarian ever since coming across the Theosophical teaching. My children had never tasted meat or chicken or fish and I suffered from the normal superiority complex which is often an outstanding characteristic of a vegetarian…. I have definitely come to the conclusion that it is better to eat beefsteak and have a kind tongue than to be a strict vegetarian and, from a pedestal of superiority, look down upon this world. Again, I would point out that generalisations are inexact. I have known many vegetarians who were lovely and sweet and kind and good.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter IV - Part 1

Children, Suffering, World, Fish

“The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit.”

Smedley D. Butler book War Is a Racket

War is a racket (1935)

Business, War, Time

“He was such a genius that he could very quickly solve any problem. He ws in the habit of giving new tips to young engineers. To keeo normal even in adverse situations was his natural features.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Problem, Nature

“Most intelligent people of the eighties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loud-speaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

Pi in the Sky (p. 242)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

Intelligence, People, Music, Age

“If you believe in the future life and, instead of preparing for it, sell it in order to buy this world, then that is folly! You do not normally sell two things for one; how can you give up an endless life for a limited number of days.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307

World, Future, Life

“It is said a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets. According to one writer, the rapist has just enough brain development to raise him above the animal, but like the animal, when in heat knows no law except nature which impels him to procreate whatever the result. Every normal man and Woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells in thinking deeply, are never sensual.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: What Every Girl Should Know (1913), Chapter 4, "Sexual Impulses--Part II", p. 47.

Family, Law, Nature, Animals

“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.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

On the subject the banal normality of villains. Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, published in 1963. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019. Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

“The Bible talks of purposeful creation. What we have, however, is an amazing amount of order; and when we see order, in our experience it normally reflects purpose.”

Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist

interview, The Voice of Genius, published in 1995.

“My philosophy is normal human orthodox philosophy, such as has come down from the Indians through the Greeks, to Spinoza. It is simply not Protestant philosophy. The problems of Protestant philosophy do not exist for me: I regard them as products of a confusion of thought, of a heresy. Catholic philosophy differs from the normal only in that it accepts sacred history as well as natural history as the true account of the facts: but when the facts are agreed upon, one way or another, philosophy has no real difficulty in discovering what to say. It has said everything essential already. To invent a philosophy would be not to have understood.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

George Santayana, in his letter to John Boynton Priestley, 15 September 1924
S - Z, George Santayana

Way, Problem, History, Nature

“It is both painful and shameful to be a slave. But it is even more distressing and painful to acknowledge that our slavery is necessary and normal and that it is a natural phenomenon. A great sin rests on our souls. We have inherited it but are not responsible for it. We are keeping our inheritance unjustly. Like a heavy rock it pushes us to the bottom, and with it around our necks we cannot swim. WE are slaves because our forefathers sold their human dignity for inhuman rights which we now enjoy. We are slaves because we are the masters. We are slaves because we are nobles, that is, nobles without any faith in our tights. We are slaves because we hold our brothers in slavery. They are our equals in birth, blood and language. We will never enjoy freedom as long as the wretched conditions of serfdom oppress us and as long as the hideous shameful, and totally unjust slavery of our peasants exists among us.”

Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) Russian author

"Appeal to Nobles", (June 1853), Imperial Russia, A Source Book 1700-1917

Soul, Pain, Faith, Freedom

“Apart from the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has proved that man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.”

Miguel de Unamuno book The Tragic Sense of Life

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone

Animals, Nature, Health, Disease

“Between the arrival of the Aryans … and the formation of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda a much longer period must have elapsed than is normally thought.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems … When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the Three Ns are recognized as ludicrous.
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 96-97

Way, Relation ships, Nature

“The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke:you think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose. But it makes her hard to figure out.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Eight, Kai

Money, Religion, Success, Girl

“But after having worked with Manikda, working in Bombay was confusing. I was too normal and realistic in front of the camera — the way Manikda had always taught me. But the Bombay directors wanted more energetic and louder acting. But today, most actors act that way.”

Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) Indian author, poet, composer, lyricist, filmmaker

After working with Satyajit Ray, working in Bombay was confusing: Sharmila Tagore

Way

“All of us started out normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives we got lost. Though we are here at this Clinic trying to find our way back, we all know that most of us will never get there. Things like the fight allow us to dream, and take us away from here, and allow us to imagine what the normal World must be like and how normal people must live in it.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 332
A Million Little Pieces (2003)

Imagination, Dreams, People, Fight

“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man…. Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being… Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments--the gift of free agency--man’s inherited and inalienable right.”

David O. McKay (1873–1970) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Improvement Era (February 1962) p. 86

God, Life, Freedom

“In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical – in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 28.

Art

“Sex. Some of us do it, most of us like it and we all think about it…. A lot. I know I do (though I was told that it’s normal). Gettin’ busy really isn’t the taboo subject that it once was.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Business, Sex, Thinking

“I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Chapter 14 (p. 207)

Selfishness

“All epoch-defining events are the result of conjunctures - the correlation of normally unconnected happenings which jolts humanity out of its existing rut and sets it on a new course.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

Source: John Maynard Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009), Ch. 1 : What Went Wrong?

“If women normally have equal appropriative powers with men, the surplus nutriment not needed for their smaller physiques may be constitutionally handed over to reproduction. Natural selection has originated an admirably complete system of related provisions to this distinct end. This fact must lead us to the conclusion that the aggregate of feminine force is the full and fair equivalent of all masculine force, physical or psychical.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Nature, Relation ships, Women, Men

“One can and should debate whether the tests in question are appropriate for the purposes at hand, but one shouldn’t be surprised when normal curves behave normally.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 2, “Local, Social, and Business Issues” Chapter 11, “Company Charged with Ethnic Bias in Hiring” (p. 61)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Question

“Beyond our normal twenty-year outlook period, we recently attempted a forecast of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] build-up. We assumed different growth rates at different times, but with an average growth rate in fossil fuel use of about one percent per year starting today, our estimate is that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might occur sometime late in the 21st century. That includes the impact of a synfuels industry. Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations may begin to induce climactic changes around the middle of the 21st century.”

Edward E. David Jr. (1925–2017) American engineer

Keynote address at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory on the Palisades, New York campus of Columbia University (October 26, 1982) ( Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 "Greenhouse Effect", October 26, 1982, December 22, 2018, Exxon, w:Edward E. David Jr., Edward E., David Jr. http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/inventing-future-energy-co2-greenhouse-effect/,)

Time, Change

“When the doctor has a heart-problem, he goes to the “heart-specialist”. The “heart-specialist” goes to the “skin-specialist” when he has a skin-problem. The “skin-specialist” goes to the “psychiatrist” when he has a mental-problem. The “psychiatrist” goes to the “priest” when he has a spiritual problem. The “priest” goes to the doctor for the “annual medical checkup”. All TRUE. SOLUTION… End the INQUISITION by EDUCATING Humanity HOW to USE the ONELAW in Normal Daily Life. And, to make the HOME again the True Center of Government.”

Roy Littlesun (1934)

facebook

Home, Heart, Problem, Education

“I'm 65; I couldn't just wear a normal suit, a nice shirt and tie. Because I don't want to look that old - I want to look at least 10 years younger.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: INTERVIEW: BRUNELLO CUCINELLI ON FORMAL/INFORMAL STYLE https://www.permanentstyle.com/2016/11/interview-brunello-cucinelli-on-formalinformal-style.html Permanent Style, 2 NOVEMBER 2016

“Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the “new normal,” those of us who know that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.””

Max Haiven (1981)

Already, in the state of emergency that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of the neoliberal regime’s claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. These have included the suspension of rents and mortgages, the free provision of public transit, the deployment of basic incomes, a hiatus in debt payments, the commandeering of privatized hospitals and other once-public infrastructure for the public good, the liberation of incarcerated people, and governments compelling private industries to reorient production to common needs. We hear news of significant numbers of people refusing to work, taking wildcat labor action, and demanding their right to live in radical ways. In some places, the underhoused are seizing vacant homes. We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation of grassroots radical demands for policies of care and solidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity.
No return to normal: for a post-pandemic liberation (March 23, 2020)

Fate

“Constant erotic stimulation of male sexuality coupled with its forbidden release through most normal channels are designed to encourage men to look at women as only things whose resistance to entrance must be overcome.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Women, Men

“(We, the Government of China) must provide better support for fighting and controlling the (COVID-19) outbreak, while safeguarding the normal order of the economy and society.”

Li Keqiang (1955–2023) Premier of the People's Republic of China

Li Keqiang (2020) cited in " China faces dilemma as it tries to get back to work amid coronavirus outbreak fears following Lunar New Year https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049407/china-faces-dilemma-it-tries-get-back-work-amid-coronavirus" on South China Morning Post, 6 February 2020. 2020s

Fight, Support

“Normal surgical masks are sufficient to guard against the (COVID-19) virus.”

Chen Shih-chung politician

Chen Shih-chung (2020) cited in " WUHAN VIRUS / Taiwan closes borders to current, former Wuhan residents https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202001230011" on Focus Taiwan, 23 January 2020.

“Freedom as a concept sides with those who are struggling for theirs, whereas nonviolence as a concept sides with the enforcers of normality and the rulers of the status quo.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 1. Violence Doesn't Exist

Freedom

“The desperate policies of panic-driven governments involve throwing huge amounts of money at the economies collapsed in response to the coronavirus threat. Monetary authorities create money and lend it at extremely low interest rates to the major corporations and especially big banks "to get them through the crisis." Government treasuries borrow vast sums to get the collapsed economy back into what they imagine is "the normal, pre-virus economy."”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

Capitalism's leaders are rushing into policy failures because of their ideological blinders.
COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Money, Imagination

“Without recognizing it as such, humanity is undergoing a great spiritual crisis that is focused through the political and economic field. That spiritual crisis can only be resolved by the resolution of our political and economic problems, which are based on the false sense of separation. If we would evolve, develop as a race, we must realize our oneness, realize that we are brothers and sisters of one family, under the one Divine Source, and identical with that Source. What happens in a normal family? They share whatever they have. A mother will not feed one child better than another, give one child 17 per cent and another 83 per cent of the food. We have to realize that we are one family, and therefore must share the resources of the world more equitably around the world.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Family, Food, Problem, Falseness

“We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction, occasionally young white women fiction, and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal.”

N. K. Jemisin (1972) American writer

Interviews Source: On how she once perceived fiction in “NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/02/nk-jemisin-its-easier-to-get-a-book-set-in-black-africa-published-if-youre-white in The Guardian (2020 May 2)

Women

“There's a misperception that autism is some thief in the night that takes a normal child and places an autistic child in its place. That's not true.”

Ari Ne'eman (1987) American autism rights advocate

Could a gene test change autism?

Night

“When you lose someone or something that you care about and as a result you feel sad or anxious or powerless, it isn't dysfunctional or pathological, it's normal.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Sadness, Feeling

“The reality is that racial lynchings were a frequent and normal feature of life in the South. This unique method of murder was a devastating form of terrorism that imposed a constant threat to all black people. The white authority structure did not only tolerate or encourage these killings but used the fear of lynchings to control and oppress black people.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Fear, Life, Reality, People

“Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold"”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

or any figure the reader would care to supply
Source: A Distant Mirror (1978)

School, Home, Time, Law

“When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of Hill Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

Soul, God, Law, Light

“An all-too-common reaction to something like racism is to hate the act so much you dismiss the person. But in [American History X] you're forced to confront the complexity of the character and his tragedy - and the fact, which people don't want to recognise, that someone like him can come out of a normal middle-class home.”

Edward Norton (1969) american actor

" Edward Norton is up for an Oscar. But who is he? https://web.archive.org/web/20190324033705/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/mar/19/awardsandprizes" (archived), theguardian.com, 19 March 1999.

Home, Hate, History, Personality

“In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a distant Signal, almost like heraldic trumpets. Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing. It is the Signal that He (or They) is coming through His Kingdom. There is no awestruck prostration or falling down on one's knees. Rather, the attitude is most matter-of-fact It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything. There are no exceptions.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 8. Because the Bible Tells Me So

Distant

“Even after I had determined that there was no physiological cause, and that I was no more insane than most of my fellow men, the fears persisted. It was a defect, illness, or deformity that had to be hidden from "normal" people.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research

Fear, People, Men

“Really, honestly, the hours in network television are insane, it’s like sixteen hours a day, fifteen hours a day. Sometimes six days a week. And it’s been like three and a half months of doing that. That’s why I get very protective of my weekends because I have so much dialog to learn and have very little time to sleep and be a normal human.”

Isabel Lucas (1985) Australian actress

Isabel Lucas talks ‘The Osiris Child’ and being no stranger to special effects. https://scifimonkeys.com/2017/11/14/isabel-lucas-talks-the-osiris-child-and-being-no-stranger-to-special-effects-interview/ (November 14, 2017)

Sleep, Time, Learning

“It is normal to feel alone at the start of any journey. It’s the people who you meet along your travels that make the trip more interesting.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Travel, Making love, Feeling, People

“I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it's totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That's been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

Lawrence, Chua. "Michael Haneke" http://bombsite.com/issues/80/articles/2489, BOMB Magazine, Summer, 2002. Retrieved 29 July 2011.

Reality, Thinking, Literature

“But I get so hungry,' she said. 'Is it normal do you think? Do you always get so hungry when you make love?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

'When you love somebody.'
Catherine and David Bourne in Ch. 1
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Love, Thinking, Making love

“Nothing is normal until you get used to it.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“I try to never lose that part of me because I know that in the beginning, when you come to a new country, you want to feel comfortable and feel normal, but now as I get older, all I want to do is get back to it. It’s fun finding that balance in my journey.”

Odeya Rush (1997) Israeli actress

INTERVIEW: LET IT SNOW’S ODEYA RUSH https://brieftake.com/interview-let-it-snow-odeya-rush/ (November 8, 2019)

Feeling, Parting, Country

“Surround yourself with people who are not in the business. And it’s do things that has nothing to do with your career. I’m really attracted to things that are genuine. The more time you spend with genuine people—the more it affects you and make you feel more normal in this crazy business.”

Odeya Rush (1997) Israeli actress

Almost Friends: Odeya Rush On The Attraction To Romantic Love Stories And Indies https://lrmonline.com/news/odeya-rush-interview/ (November 29, 2017)

Time, Business, Feeling, Making love

“There is a process known as parthenogenesis, literally virgin birth, by which a uniparental embryo can be created out of a normal egg. It’s been done with animals. The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 552-553)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Birth, Chance, Animals, Women

“Campaigns are normally very, very social. Politics is absolutely a team sport. And doing all of these campaign activities from separate homes and not being able to gather … it’s far more challenging to feed off each other's energy, even on the Zoom call.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

North Shore News https://www.nsnews.com/news/north-van-lonsdale-incumbent-ma-not-making-any-predictions-1.24226696, North Shore News: North Van-Lonsdale incumbent Ma not making any predictions, October 24, 2020

Home, Sport

“We have to work on normalizing and destigmatizing the LGBT+ community before anything else, and this requires an exceptional and serious effort; this is one of my goals.”

Zhiar Ali (1999) Kurdish human rights activist and artist

Ali on the future of LGBT rights in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Communication, Effort

“Time and effective communication are the best medicine in love. Consider all the imbalances and get back to normal. Literally fixing your love life with your partner.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Communication, Time, Love, Life

“Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The Art of Propagating Opinion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri

Idea, Way

“Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody's the same.”

Jonathan Van Ness (1987) American hairstylist and television personality

page 218
Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love (2019)

“When you do action stuff and sci-fi stuff, you have a lot to hide behind - the hair and the makeup and the special effects. But when you play a normal girl, it's challenging because you have to trust yourself.”

Lana Condor (1997) Vietnamese-American actress

As quoted in "Get Ready to Be Charmed by Lana Condor" in Vanity Fair (17 August 2018) https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/lana-condor-to-all-the-boys-ive-loved-before

Girl

“[…] Abrupt climate change may be normal in the planet's history, or, to state it differently, that the earth's climate is inherently very unstable. The period in which human civilization developed has been if anything, an anomalous ten-thousand-year epoch of remarkable stability.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 149.

History, Change

“This fear of the power of the totalitarian state is something normal people cannot understand.”

Rebel Pepper (1973) Chinese political cartoonist

"Rebel with a cause: An interview with China’s most famous political cartoonist" in SAGE Journals https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422016657031a (29 June 2016)

Understanding, People, Fear

“The truth is, models are freaks of nature. We are not normal people, and we're just born this way because of a genetic cocktail that our parents gave to us. You know, most of us have a really high metabolism.”

Padma Lakshmi (1970) Indian-born American author, actress, model, television host and executive producer

Source: "Padma Lakshmi, Model, Actor And TV Host, Says Above All, She's A Writer" in NPR https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/909583983/padma-lakshmi-model-actor-and-tv-host-says-above-all-shes-a-writer (4 September 2020)

People, Truth, Nature, Parent

“The police don't normally look back and investigate things that have taken place a year ago.”

Dominic Raab (1974) British politician (born 1974)

2020s, 2021 Source: Interviewed on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-59532832, talking about enquiries into alleged Downing Street parties during COVID restrictions (5 December 2021)

“They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well—you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Source: Revelations (1993)

Marijuana, Lie, Effort

“I as President of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic in such a destructive situation made every possible effort to return the dialogue to normal and prevent an escalation of tension with Moldova.”

Vadim Krasnoselsky (1970) politician

Source: Vadim Krasnoselsky (2021) cited in " Commentary by Vadim Krasnoselsky regarding the next appeal to the President of the Republic of Moldova https://novostipmr.com/en/news/21-12-24/commentary-vadim-krasnoselsky-regarding-next-appeal-president" on Novosti Pridnestrovya, 24 December 2021.

Effort

“It's not a provocation (to Mainland China) to come to Taiwan. It should be normal.”

Raphaël Glucksmann (1979) French film director and journalist

Source: Raphaël Glucksmann (2021) cited in: " Taiwan official urges Ireland to reopen representative office in Taipei amid 'new EU relationship' https://www.thejournal.ie/taipei-representative-office-ireland-china-5593311-Nov2021/" in The Journal, 6 November 2021.

“Allow our common home to rest from our throw-away culture, our addiction to consumption, to unlimited economic growth, and to the dirty and deadly fossil fuels. Let us open ourselves to the new normal of interconnectedness and interrelatedness. We are in this together.”

Jose Romeo Lazo (1949) Filipino Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Philippine Church flags off Season of Creation https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2020-09/philippines-church-society-celebrate-season-creation.html (3 September 2020)

Home

“At the very mention of your name
I get shivers down my back and in my brain.
The parts that used to function normally
are now, as you can see,
acting very strange.
Oh, at the very mention of your name
I don't know why but if I were tied up in chains
I would somehow be released
all problems too would cease
my heart would never feel no pain.
At the very mention of your name.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"At The Very Mention Of Your Name" (song) Song lyrics Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "At The Very Mention Of Your Name" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNpIBp-wleI (song on YouTube. (Live performance in Japan, 1993.))

Pain, Heart, Problem, Feeling

“Normality is a way to nowhere. A normal company will go bankrupt.”

Jonas Ridderstråle (1966) Swedish business theorist

Way

“I decided to experiment with normality.”

Tara Westover book Educated

Source: Educated (2018), Chapter 24, “A Knight, Errant” (p. 212)

“Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Stone Sky

Source: The Stone Sky (2017), Chapter 7 “you’re planning ahead” (p. 170)

People

“Violence is the daimonic gone awry. It is "demon possession" in its starkest form. Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 5, p. 130

Age, Time

“The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 5 : Love and the Daimonic, p. 123

Personality, Rage, Anger, Nature

“[…] Abrupt climate change may be normal in the planet's history, or, to state it differently, that the earth's [sic] climate is inherently very unstable.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 149.

History, Change

“All the mysteries of the world seem normal after dark. If imagination shows dead thumbs aching for a ride, those dead folk only prove the hot and spermy goodness of life.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 469

Imagination, World, Dead, Life

“Taiwan will be a beautiful country. A normal country. We need time to change, the road is long but we will continue to follow it.”

Lin Ching-yi (1974) Taiwanese politician

"Taiwan 2020 election, voices from DPP: "Democracy, rights and identity: so we will be stronger"" in Affaritaliani.it https://www.affaritaliani.it/politica/geopolitica/taiwan-2020-election-dpp-interview.html?refresh_ce (23 November 2019)

Time, Country, Beauty, Change

“As long as there is a wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot, there can be no talk of normality in Germany.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

As quoted in "East, West Mark Berlin Wall in Conflicting Ways" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/08/14/east-west-mark-berlin-wall-in-conflicting-ways/0ee15034-ea45-4c31-9490-7f64e7ac159b/ (August 14, 1986), The Washington Post

“The more spiritual we become, the more normal and human we will be.”

Witness Lee (1905–1997) Chinese Christian preacher

Life-study of Ezekiel - p. 52, of Witness Lee - By Living Stream Ministry, ISBN 0-7363-0755-9

“Forget normal, I need better!”

Josh Duffy (1978) Subject of the documentary THE MAYOR

Film Quotes

Forgetting

“Ignore the normal people, who knows what they’re thinking.”

Josh Duffy (1978) Subject of the documentary THE MAYOR

Film Quotes

Thinking, People

“We must recognize today that it is normal for the wealthiest to be the greatest thieves. When a poor man steals it is merely a theft, a petty crime -- it is solely about survival and necessity. The rich are the ones who steal from the treasury, customs duties, and who exploit the people.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

From a speech given to the Organization of African Unity on 29 July 1987 https://www.marxists.org/archive/sankara/1987/july/29.htm

People

“I like extreme. I never like to be normal. F*** normal. I’m the black sheep in life. I’m the weird one and I like that.”

Dave Leduc (1991) Canadian Lethwei fighter (born 1991)

As quoted in South China Morning Post https://www.scmp.com/sport/martial-arts/other-martial-arts/article/3021025/maybe-i-was-born-myanmar-another-life/ (August 2, 2019) On Lethwei

Life

“Normality is a boring uniformity, madness a lively uniqueness.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La normalità è una noiosa uniformità, la follia una vivace unicità.
Source: prevale.net

Madness

“Dysfunctional relationship is not the exception. It is the norm. The only reason people don't realize it is because they've normalized the dysfunction.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People

“The ignorant often sin of education, arrogance and presumption. For his it is normal behave like this because he is not used to acquiring culture, according to him he is born wise and generally due to his closed nature he dies always together with his ignorance.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: L'ignorante pecca spesso di educazione, arroganza e presunzione. Per lui è normale comportarsi così perché non è abituato ad acquisire cultura, secondo lui nasce saggio e generalmente per la sua natura chiusa muore sempre insieme alla sua ignoranza.
Source: prevale.net

Education, Nature

“Just because you think something is normal, does not mean it is healthy, does not mean it is right and does not mean it is good.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Thinking

This quote waiting for review.

“A frightened society still recognizes the existence of the problem; an adapted society begins to incorporate it as part of normality.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Cuando una ciudad aprende a convivir con sus desaparecidos Mundial, memoria y desaparición en la Guadalajara de 2026. (2026, 10 junio). Zona Docs. https://www.zonadocs.mx/2026/06/10/cuando-una-ciudad-aprende-a-convivir-con-sus-desaparecidos-mundial-memoria-y-desaparicion-en-la-guadalajara-de-2026/

Problem, Parting

Quotes about normalization page 12

Quotes about normalization
page 12