Ordinary people Quotes

“One of my greatest fears, and what might be one of the greatest obstacles to ending or putting a massive dent in extreme poverty alleviation, is this: when everyday, normal people feel as if they can't help. Let me repeat: this is a tragedy.In fact, I would say it is the ordinary people who will determine how much impact is done in the world. It's the ordinary folks who have a great responsibility. If individuals like you and me decide in our hearts to be deliberate and care for the poor, there is no doubt we can truly see the majority of extreme poverty vanish into thin air.”

“And it was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements--woman, desert, camels, aloneness--hit some soft sport in this era's passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who seem themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn't it be my luck to pick just this combination. The reaction was totally unexpected and it was very, very weird. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit.”

“For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts.”

“I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.”

“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”

“Accept the ego of extraordinary people as they have achieved something but don't accept the ego of ordinary people.”

“Successful people are defined as ordinary people who never gave up on their dreams and passion is the secret of that persistence!”

“risk is everywhere and we all do take risk everyday, knowingly or unknowingly.Ordinary risk produces ordinary men and extraordinary risk equals extraordinary men. The unique line of boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary is the risk they both take. Great and extraordinary people patiently take a visionary, calculated and an avant-garde risk regardless of the susurrant and cacophonic call of the masses to retreat. They fall, they learn and they move. Without taking a thoughtful risk, we risk our lives unthoughtfully each day”

“Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.”