Living Outside The Norm Quotes & Sayings

Where do we get the energy to keep on hoping and praying that things will get better? What makes us believe we DESERVE a happy life to begin with? Is this just an American phenomenon? We just assume that we are entitled to happiness? And when we do get the things we wished so hard for, are we happy? Or do we just want more...? And what about people in less developed countries who's lives are REALLY hard? People who live in places where infant death, widespread disease, rape, general oppression, poverty and starvation are the norm. Why do THEY keep going? Do they hope for happiness too, or do they think there are no other options but to keep living. I need to know. — Jessica Kenley

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

You go to bed different ... tossing and turning is the norm ... you wake to a sunny day but clouds follow you wherever you go. You wonder if you are strong enough to climb out of the depression you are living in and your prayers to God seem empty because you are sooo very tired of telling him the same thing over and over again ... if we are really being real ... there may even be moments after impact you forget how to pray ... maybe you don't even want to. — Erica Stone

...to think biblically rather than conventionally, to be part of a body where radical living is becoming the norm. — Francis Chan

Symbolic interactionists stress that to understand poverty we must focus on what
poverty means to people. When people evaluate where they are in life, they compare
themselves with others. In some rural areas, simple marginal living is the norm, and
people living in these circumstances don't feel poor. But in Leslie's cosmopolitan circle,
people can feel deprived if they cannot afford the latest upscale designer clothing from
their favorite boutique. The meaning of poverty, then, is relative: What poverty is differs
from group to group within the same society, as well as from culture to culture and from
one era to the next. — James M. Henslin

I wasn't living on the edge, I had gone over it. Insanity was now the norm and I had to keep feeding it in order to maintain the new domain I had created for myself. I had one eye on the road and one on the rear view mirror when I wasn't pre-occupied with my beer, cigarettes or car stereo. — Steven C. Smith

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

Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes - it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm. — Peter Drucker

It's a lot to live up to. These pressures of achieving. From the moment you're born, you're pounded with the expectations of what you need to actualize in order to become a success. Go to college. Get married. Raise a family. It's what you're supposed to do. The plans you're supposed to make. The life you're supposed to live. Diverge from the norm and you're frowned upon. Questioned. Shunned. There's something wrong with you if you're not interested in improving yourself. If you can't make a commitment of marriage. If you don't want to have children. So people earn a college degree so they can get a good job. They work at a job they hate just to earn a living. They spend two months' salary on an engagement ring. They pop out a couple of kids they don't really want just so they can fit in. Because it's what their parents did. Because it's what society expects you to do. Because it's safer to take the same path everyone else has traveled. Truth is, no one's listening to Robert Frost. — S.G. Browne

I think there were times when I first started out, when I was covering Iraq - I was basically living there in 2003 and 2004 - that car bombs and attacks became so the norm that it was weird for me to leave and realize that no one else actually cared about what was going on there. — Lynsey Addario

Our society has changed in unforeseeable ways since Social Security was created. For example, we are living longer, healthier, and more productive lives and while this is all great news, this has also placed added pressure on America's retirement system. — Norm Coleman

You know you are truly alive, when you care for every living thing. One day soon, it will be the norm to view others not as competition, but gifts to share this gorgeous planet with, and we will not be able to imagine the loss of but one. — Tom Althouse

Those who understand freedom as the radically arbitrary license to do just what they want and to have their own way are living in a lie, for by our very nature humans are a part of a shared existence and our freedom is shared freedom. Our very nature contains direction and norm, and becoming inwardly one with this direction and norm is what freedom is all about. — Angelo Scarano