Best Norm Quotes & Sayings

The reason we have few friends in adversity, is, because we have no true ones in prosperity. — Norm MacDonald

Help your players to control their emotions - do this through example. — Norm Sloan

The QSM Software Almanac is an invaluable resource. It establishes a norm for software projects, including best of class, worst of class and averages. In addition, it profiles the state of the art of software construction and enhancement. I wish I'd had this wonderful reference book years ago. — Tom DeMarco

The first principle of solid wisdom is discretion, without it all the erudition of life is merely bagatelle. — Norm MacDonald

You're trying your best to make people laugh; then if you fail, they hate you. But your intent's the same. It's not like you're trying to do evil to them. — Norm MacDonald

Hurricane seasons with four or more super-hurricanes, those with sustained wind speeds of 131 mph or more will soon become the norm. — Joseph J. Romm

You gotta chill and relax, and release, meditate, and breathe and walk, and ski and surf, and bask and sunbathe and relax and sing and love and laugh and nurture yourself, and eat good stuff. And find better and better feeling thoughts and practice them until they become the norm. And then everything that life has caused you to become must manifest into your experience. — Esther Hicks

I think having an uncompromising ideology eventually forces you out of the norm. — David Bezmozgis

You may think things didn't change much after the 60s 'revolution' - but they did. The levels of prescriptive disapproval for anyone who stepped outside the norm receded. — Vashti Bunyan

John McEnroe ... was arguably the best serve-and-volley man of all time, but then McEnroe was an exception to pretty much every predictive norm there was. At his peak (say 1980 to 1984), he was the greatest tennis player who ever lived-the most talented, the most beautiful, the most tormented: a genius. For me, watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff lame truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad. — David Foster Wallace

And thus I learned that at Harvard, while knowing a great deal is the norm and knowing everything is the goal, appearing to know everything is an acceptable substitute. I pondered this great truth during the two-hour seminar. I was so buoyed up by it that I didn't pay enough attention to snorkeling up little bits of food in order to keep my nausea under control. I sailed right on into my next class, another seminar, confident that I could get through it without losing my lunch. — Martha N. Beck

Anyone who is different or is slightly out of the norm, is considered crazy. — Eric Cantona

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny. — Norm MacDonald

Teenagers don't know what love is. They have mixed-up ideas. They go for a drive and the boy runs out of gas and they smooch a little and the girl says she loves him. That isn't love. Love is when you are married twenty-five years, smooching in your living room and he runs out of gas and she says she still loves him. That's love. — Norm Crosby

I hate it. It looks like a stickup at 7-Eleven. Five guys standing there with their hands in the air. — Norm Sloan

The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm. — Raymond Loewy

Modern capitalism seeks to assure us that it operates according to the principles of free creativity, endless development and diversity. It glosses over its other side in order to hide the reality that millions of people are enslaved by an all-powerful and fantastically stable norm of production. We want to reveal this lie. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

The importance of minority does not reside in the fact of its relative exclusion from the majority but in the political potential of its divergence from the norm. — Paul Patton

Those that don't follow the norm usually make the best leaders, — K.F. Breene

We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade. — Robert Kuttner

If you're watching a comedian on television and he's making a political point, I would say he's gotten too serious. — Norm MacDonald

A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm. — Jennifer Egan

We live in a world where it is completely the norm to worry about what we put in our bodies but worry very little about what we throw in our minds. We think a hamburger is bad but a celebrity gossip magazine is completely harmless. As children you never hear "don't put that garbage in your mind," but for our body counterpart it is common thread. There is something very wrong with this scenario. — Evan Sutter

Flattery succeeds best on minds previously occupied by conceit. — Norm MacDonald

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader. — Larry Correia

I just like doing standup, that's all I'm interested in or good at. — Norm MacDonald

Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men. — Ian Fleming

Living under capitalism, I like learning to feel comfortable with activity that does not result in success - since non-success is the norm. Trying your best and making it is not the norm - it's propaganda. Of course I play with notions of hype, too ... The entire Comatonse website is a sarcastic hype-engine, sprawling forever, overwhelming the viewer with nothingness. — Terre Thaemlitz

A capacity for hating the object of desire is, perhaps, the best cure for love in cases of disappointment. — Norm MacDonald

Do I wish that things were more orderly in Washington and rational and people listened to the best arguments and compromised and operated in a more thoughtful and organized fashion? Absolutely. But when you look at history that's been the exception rather than the norm. — Barack Obama

I like to do talk show appearances where I get to just be myself, and I do stand-up where I can completely be myself. That's what I've always loved the most, of anything. — Norm MacDonald

In terms of merit, sports has mathematical statistics. That's how you know who the best player is. — Norm MacDonald

I've grown up watching and admiring Norm. Sherie actually starred in the first off-Broadway show I ever saw in New York, which was The Last Five Years. It's amazing how things come full-circle and how the community (once you hang around it long enough) grows smaller and smaller as it grows. Sharing the stage with these people is more than a dream come true it's so special. They're so warm and giving and offer the best advice. Sherie is very nice and maternal and nurturing. — Tituss Burgess

You ever see 'The Dating Game'? That's a weird game show. The prize on that show: another contestant. Talk about cheap. — Norm MacDonald

Procuring the house in Ballister was a desperate bid for respect, for recognition, the ultimate gesture (or sacrifice, as it turned out) that would prove him a worthy successor to the Flo and Walter Prices of the world.
To my mind, the Culver was Norm's way home, the only way he knew. It was an ever-evolving means to an ever-evolving end that eventually ended him. Who or what led Norm down that thorny path - devotion, economic pressures, family cynicism, Beth's insatiable appetite - has been a topic of endless debate. You can believe what you want to believe. Personally, I don't think any rational argument under the sun would have deterred Beth's "messiah" from his mission. If the Ballister acquisition was Norm's cross, as everyone seems to think it was, then it was Norm who chose to bear that cross. And pride that nailed him to it. — Ted Gargiulo

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. — Paul Kriwaczek

I love writing - it's the best. But I really hate collaboration. — Norm MacDonald

You ever be having a really good dream, and then, uh- right in the middle of the dream you wake up, right in the best part of the dream? And there you are, back in your stinkin' life again? Man, that's rough, eh? — Norm MacDonald

Our Pastoral solicitude induces us to earnestly protect and preserve in everything and especially in the sacred rites of the Church the best and old norm. — Pope Clement VIII

Stand-up has the best writers, because it's the hardest writing by a million miles. — Norm MacDonald

On Intelligence:
Intelligence will not make you rich unless your intelligence is about getting rich.
Corollary: Intelligence will lead one to to appreciate things that cost money over things that make money.
Corollary: Being a genius is antithetical to being successful unless you're a genius at being successful.
Corollary: Being intelligent does not make you rich but it can keep you from being poor.
Corollary: Intelligence leads to interests, mostly not gainful.
Corollary: Intelligence is like molasses, with effort, it goes where you put it.
Rubbers are best for those who refuse to use them.
Corollary: Intelligence adds but stupidity multiplies.
Corollary: Reverse evolution is the new norm.
Only luck can save one from one's own stupidity.
Only idiots regard a second chance the same as the first.
The higher the IQ, the greater the chance of self-deception.
Still waters are often shallow puddles. — Kalifer Deil

What may be learned from the rebuttals made by the defendants in New Jersey and from the protests that were sparked by the decision of the court? Much of the resistance, it appears, derives from a conservative anxiety that equity equates to "leveling." The fear that comes across in many of the letters and the editorials in the New Jersey press is that democratizing opportunity will undermine diversity and even elegance in our society and that the best schools will be dragged down to a sullen norm, a mediocre middle ground of uniformity. References to Eastern European socialism keep appearing in these letters. — Jonathan Kozol

You have to understand your best. Your best isn't Barrymore's best or Olivier's best or my best, but your own. Every person has his norm. And in that norm every person is a star. Olivier could stand on his head and still not be you. Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body. We don't need for you to imitate anybody, because that would be second best. And second best is no better than your worst. — Stella Adler

In love, we are best pleased when we please others. — Norm MacDonald

We want our parents to be the norm from which we deviate. — Carrie Brownstein

I'm happy doing stand-up, but I'll probably do a television show eventually. If not, I'll delve into this Internet world and decide best how to harness it. What I like best about it is the independent movie style and the ability to just be completely reckless within that world. I like that a lot. I just have to acquaint myself with technology. — Norm MacDonald

At the root of everything lay the passionate
desire of thinking people to find a simple, unifying norm for society like the law of gravity that Newton had found for nature. — James H. Billington

mean it could be," said Grandpa. "Really?" said Norm. "Might just be the thin end of the wedge, Norman." And what was that supposed to mean? thought Norm. Thin end of what flipping wedge? A wedge of cheese? What was it with flipping cheese today? Everyone — Jonathan Meres

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright

The rifts in this ancient wall continue to be patched with exhortations to women to avoid challenging the norm even if it means faking orgasm and sacrificing honesty in their intimate relationships with men. In the past we have been willing to pay this price; whether we should continue to do so is question for individuals; not historians, to decide. — Rachel P. Maines

If love comes to you in a way that isn't the norm then at least it came to you; not everyone is that lucky. — Donna Lynn Hope

Most often we call a person intelligent when they learn to conform to the societal norm. Are they wise? — Debasish Mridha

I just get really bored with sticking to the norm and having the proper conservative image. That's just so not me. — Christina Aguilera

We are quick to stick labels on others - especially those who don't fit in with the norm. 'Harold Fry' is about a broken marriage; 'Perfect' is about a broken person. They are both about finding kindness where you least expect it. — Rachel Joyce

To be successful you need to have good, happy Players. — Norm Sloan

Since when has bringing stolen money to churches for Pastor's blessings become a Nigerian norm? — Sunday Adelaja

Pulp Fiction is a, uh, gritty, urban satire. Pump Friction is a uh-uh, a bunch of uh, dudes and ladies having dirty sex. — Norm MacDonald

medicine is undergoing a tremendous conceptual revolution. Twentieth-century medicine aimed to heal the sick. Twenty-first-century medicine is increasingly aiming to upgrade the healthy. Healing the sick was an egalitarian project, because it assumed that there is a normative standard of physical and mental health that everyone can and should enjoy. If someone fell below the norm, it was the job of doctors to fix the problem and help him or her 'be like everyone'. — Yuval Noah Harari

Some people - and I am one of them - hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically. — Vladimir Nabokov

In our fast-forward culture, we have lost the art of eating well. Food is often little more than fuel to pour down the hatch while doing other stuff - surfing the Web, driving, walking along the street. Dining al desko is now the norm in many workplaces. All of this speed takes a toll. Obesity, eating disorders and poor nutrition are rife. — Carl Honore

If you cannot patiently bear correction, endeavor to avoid fault. — Norm MacDonald

I am a true psychic. In my family it's the norm. My sister and mother are always 'in my head' and say or do the same things I'm doing at the same time. — Franny Armstrong

In England, there are so many TV commercials with nudity in them, and there are so many TV programs that show nudity on a regular basis. It's becoming more of a norm. — Mark Roberts

What I did find out because I grew up with a lot of chaos early on: sometimes, you're born into a family, and their norm is already in your red zone of dangerous feeling or feeling too chaotic. You don't get to really do anything about that when you're a kid. — Patricia Arquette

Through the various discourses, legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied; sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness; from childhood to old age, a norm of sexual development was defined and all the possible deviations were carefully described; pedagogical controls and medical treatments were organized; around the least fantasies, moralists, but especially doctors, brandished the whole emphatic vocabulary of abomination. — Michel Foucault

The beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of folly. — Norm MacDonald

I am convinced that the norm in Russia should become a family with three children. — Vladimir Putin

It's maybe every third person now (who calls out 'Norm!' when they see me). It used to be every other person. It's faded a bit, but not too much. They're always going to remember me that way. I decided a long time ago that if I'm going to let this make me crazy, I'm going to be certifiable, so I just roll with it. — George Wendt

Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto. — Roger E. Olson

Staying, we all know, is not the norm in our mobile culture. A great deal of money is spent each day to create desires in each of us that can never be fulfilled. I suspect that much of our restlessness is a return on this investment. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Buddhism cannot be true to itself until Buddhists resolve their ambivalence toward nonhuman animals and extend the full protection of their compassion to the most harmless and helpless of those who live at our mercy in the visible realms. — Norm Phelps

Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive. — Peter Drucker

There's no story if there isn't some conflict. The memorable things are usually not how pulled together everybody is. I think everybody feels lonely and trapped sometimes. I would think it's more or less the norm. — Wes Anderson

For too long we have occupied ourselves with responding to the consequences of cruelty and abuse and have neglected the important task of building up an ethical system in which justice for animals is regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Our only hope is to put our focus on the education of the young. — John Hoyt