Top 650 Ordinary Quotes

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

We are determined to build a society defined by decency and integrity that does not tolerate the plunder of public resources nor the theft by corporate criminals of the hard-earned savings of ordinary people.

The visible and near-ultraviolet emission spectrum of the CH radical has been known ever since spectra of an ordinary Bunsen burner have been taken.

Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot… I’ve seen all these marriages that failed. Those people are always hollering at each other. That doesn’t work.

It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.

My films are very everyday, and people don’t always want to go to the cinema to see ordinary lives. They want to see something a bit more extraordinary. I get that desire, but it’s not the kind of film I want to make.

Well, that’s what life is – this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.

Then all the foreigners started coming over. I don’t mind that but a lot of teams are laying out fortunes for ordinary players and that’s no good for our youngsters coming through.

In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space… But you laid the foundation for space tourism.

There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike – information and wit.

Modiji is a BJP worker, and crores of karyakartas are proud of the fact that an ordinary worker has become a beloved personality in India and abroad.

I decided on the spot that I would be an artist, and I assure you, it was no ordinary artist I had in mind.

School is now a place where punishment and discipline are prioritized over serving students and educating them. Any moment where a student falls outside scripted behavior becomes an opportunity for law enforcement to come in, criminalizing ordinary things people do every day.

I am delighted with the strong vote I have received. My message of positive leadership, patriotism and commitment clearly was resonating with tens of thousands of ordinary Irish people.

The stuff that I find really intriguing is always how do ordinary people behave in extraordinary circumstances. And that’s why we have a lot of cop shows and lawyer shows and medical shows is that you’re looking for situations that just always heighten the stakes.

The secret to life is finding joy in ordinary things. I’m interested in happiness.

Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance.

In general, when you travel, you get into a different reality and are able to more accurately reflect on your ordinary life. Hiking does that for me.

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

It is actually getting much harder for someone from an ordinary background to break through the ranks. In the period from 1964 to 1997, every single Prime Minister – from Harold Wilson to John Major – was the product of a state school.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few threatens the ability of ordinary people to raise their voices and have a say over how our societies are run.

It was like falling off a building and suddenly, bang, you hit the bottom. The first time it happened was on an ordinary day at home. I was taking down some curtains. I took one step, turned around, took another step and then I fell and hit my head hard on the rowing machine.

Last chances in the Middle East have been two a dirham since the 1950s. Each year the enmities are more profound, the despots more bloodthirsty and clownish, the violence more extreme, and the conditions of ordinary existence more ghastly.

Once they began doing ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ apparently the audience wasn’t that keen on the ordinary apprentice. That is probably the best indictment with our fascination with celebrity in our culture, which drives me crazy.

Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia – you know, back in the ’40s and ’50s.

I’ve always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don’t just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.

Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.

Ordinary Catholics are praying when they do not think they are. They are praying when they offer implicitly all they are doing to God.

What we want is that one day every workplace will be diverse – we already encourage that with gender and ethnicity, but the next frontier is neurodiversity and it will become ordinary. People won’t think twice about it.

I’m one of these people who tends to think that the ordinary people are more fascinating than the celebrities and even the politicians.

The fact that something is actually understandable and relatable doesn’t mean that it’s unsophisticated or banal. It just means that it’s crystal-clear. And if you can’t explain it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s so brilliant that ordinary mortals can’t fathom it. It might just mean that it makes no sense.

Even ordinary people aren’t ordinary, not really. They’re filled up with thoughts and feelings that you might never know are there until they suddenly materialise.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.

With larger-than-life films, you are lifted from your mundane, ordinary life because you empathise with the hero, and people see themselves in him.

You don’t think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about?

Personally, love is very important for me. There are lots of ordinary things in life, so love should be extraordinary. I hope I achieve that.

Since cowardice must occur at a time and place where an enemy either has already appeared or may yet turn up, servicemen in peacetime – and ordinary civilians – can breathe a sigh of relief. If you are yellow-bellied back home, you’re not technically a coward.

Of course we have Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but in many ways we are a kind of republic. We don’t have royals in Australia, so it was kind of unusual to run into those kind of people. But aside from that it was quite ordinary.

My family, they are definitely not an ordinary family.

I’m a believer in the ordinary person, that the ordinary person is just as important and has an equally unique perspective on the world as someone who is famous or perhaps more privileged.

What people don’t understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no other country in the world where the ordinary citizen can go out and enjoy hunting and fishing. There’s no other nation in the world where that happens. And it’s very much a part of our heritage.

If you’re going to have a free economy, one in which the ordinary citizen can dispose of his own income, you’re going to have people who dispose of it in an anti-social way.

The ordinary American – as far as I can tell – knows so much less than he did fifty years ago and has such poor work habits compared with fifty years ago that the average multiplicand of knowledge/capabilities is a much smaller number than it was in 1961.

Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it’s okay to be a regular person and be really into food.

If there was no Bill Bowerman, there would have been no me. He had about as much of an impact on my life as any one person could have. He taught me about competition and ingrained it in me. He taught me not to praise ordinary performances.

The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience’s eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience ‘right now.’

It is time to move on. House prices won’t rise and the economy won’t fully engage until more distressed properties are resolved and put back into ordinary use.