Norm Quotes & Sayings

Because you get it, you know? You get that the colors and the lines and the curves aren't trying to be like everything else in the world. You understand that the abstract art is standing out against the norm because it's the only way abstract art knows how to stand. And you get so fucking happy because it's so beautiful. And unique. And edgy. And ... abstract. — Brittainy C. Cherry

I think clever people think that poor people are stupid. — Norm MacDonald

In giving advice, aptitude is often less to be considered, than seasonableness. — Norm MacDonald

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

The purpose of American culture is to create a norm, Morris. That means extraordinary people must be leveled, and it happens to Jimmy. He ends up working in advertising, for God's sake, and what greater agent of the norm is there in this fucked - up country? — Stephen King

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

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm. — Tanith Lee

As long as male behavior is taken to be the norm, there can be no serious questioning of male traits and behavior. A norm is by definition a standard for judging; it is not itself subject to judgment. — Myriam Miedzian

De Sade says you must commit crimes. In using the word crime we're adopting the consensus term, though among ourselves we would not describe any of our actions as such. We need the universally valid norm to get a kick out of our own extremeness. We are monsters, even if we disguise ourselves as ordinary people. We are the children of ordinary people, but we are not content with that. Inwardly we are consumed with wickedness, outwardly we are grammar school pupils. — Elfriede Jelinek

Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning. — Norm MacDonald

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

Some men mistake generosity for charity: these flatter themselves that they are giving gratuitously, whilst they are merely rewarding secret services offered their vanity. — Norm MacDonald

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

Today, as we have seen, fascism and communism are discredited, but are replaced by a paraphilic consumer culture driven by fantasy, desperately in search of distractions and escalating sensations, and a fundamentalist culture wherein the rigors of a private journey are shunned in favor of an ideology that, at the expense of the paradoxes and complexities of truth, favors one-sided resolutions, black-and-white values, and a privileging of one's own complexes as the norm for others. — James Hollis

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

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

Appalling numbers of youth have been led into a cynical ultra-sophisticated attitude which regards drinking as a badge of social aptitude, which makes a fetish of sport and professes eroticism as a way of life. A perverted and insane pictorial art, lewd exhibitionistic dancing and jungle music form the spiritual norm of this sector of America's youth. — Francis Parker Yockey

With the computer and stuff, the difference between a rich guy and a poor guy, to me, is nothing. Because I don't like big houses, I don't drive a car, so you know, I just live in a small apartment and I have my computer, which is really cool. — Norm MacDonald

The culture of the U.S. military is such that human enhancement is accepted as a goal, taking people beyond the norm. There are so many resources going into that kind of research. — Jessa Gamble

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

If I audition for a job that I don't get, to be honest with you, I'd rather my friend get it. I think there also has to be an acknowledgement of the fact that, as an actor, being in employment is not the norm. — Ben Schnetzer

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

I think people are transient. Back in the early church, there was a 'stick and stay' mentality. In this day and time, people have a fast food mentality of ministry. If it doesn't fit them or if it doesn't fit in their schedule, they'll move on to something else. That's a norm in today's time. — Marvin Sapp

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

I see a generation comprised of all ages, inclusive of men and women, awakening to the extraordinary qualities hidden within. The power to accomplish remarkable feats and live an exceptional life is not defined by an individual's family, education, or occupation; it's a disposition of the heart. Unless it's suppressed, there is an innate desire to rise above the norm. I encourage you to step into the unknown, embrace the divine empowerment, and live your extraordinary life. — John Bevere

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also. — C.S. Lewis

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

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

The problem is that the spurious, the unreal, the untrue is so much easier to find that it is in danger of becoming the norm. — Idries Shah

The only way to survive in a community where movement was the norm and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense on tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources. — Reza Aslan

When you take on more than the norm, your boss can't help but think that you're capable of a bigger role. This includes showing that you're willing to take risks by making innovative suggestions. — Travis Bradberry

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

We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival. — Thomas Berry

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

It's not the norm, I guess, to see someone as aggressive as me being more or less very athletic. You see me running, having a big, violent hit, it's going to look bad, but that's the natural ability I've been given. Why would I let it run to the wayside and not use it? — Ndamukong Suh

Throughout the passage of time I have surprised myself at the determination I have found from within to succeed in my endeavours. I don't think I was ever seriously conscious of this determination, being well hidden deep inside and thus I always viewed any accomplishment "as old hat". Having lived life my way and on my terms,I have broken through the boundaries of the considered norm. — Dick Mawson

I just hate plugs. It just doesn't seem entertaining to me. I've never plugged anything in my life on a talk show ever. I understand people use that vehicle. It's just not very entertaining. — Norm MacDonald

I sort of try to write everything for me. I'm a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don't remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio. I'm trying to make sure the jokes are self-contained so they're accessible to everyone. — Norm MacDonald

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

But now, he was conscious of his own impatience with what he had begun to see as the sinister pedantry of therapy, its suggestion that life was somehow reparable, that there existed a societal norm and that the patient was being guided toward conforming to it. — Hanya Yanagihara

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

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

Women's liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only 'women's issue' worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist. There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be liberation. — Ariel Levy

Part of why I love these angry, straight, white punks is that they are stripping the dharma of its bullshit, and applying it to contexts and styles that, even if they aren't mine, are at least different from the norm. — Jay Michaelson

I always suggest to women to take time away from the norm. And that takes a lot of courage. Most people can't do that, they can't loose and run, and say, 'Look, I'm going to just have an entirely new environment, devoid of all the habitual concerns of the day.' — Maya Tiwari

Boys don't cry - or at least that's what everybody's supposed to believe. — Jess C. Scott

I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable. — Michael Eric Dyson

Imprudent restrictions often force youth farther than enticement would carry them; and careless limitation is frequently worse than no injunction. — Norm MacDonald

Stock kernels will be the norm for some time. — Bill Hayden

Don't pressure yourself. Don't worry about what others think you should do or what the societal "norm" is. Do what moves you and makes you smile and the "good" will follow. — Misha Collins

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

Note to self: no matter how bad life gets, there's always beer. — Norm MacDonald

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

Sopping, and with no sign of stopping, either- then a breather. Warm again, storm again- what is the norm, again? It's fine, it's not, it's suddenly hot: Boom, crash, lightning flash! — Old Farmer's Almanac

When doing science (or perhaps when doing anything at all in a society as judgmental as our own), be very careful and very certain before pronouncing something to be a norm - because at that instant, you have made it supremely difficult to ever again look objectively at an exception to that supposed norm. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I met Elvis first in Las Vegas. I think I was appearing with Tom Jones and he came backstage to say hello to Tom or we went to his dressing room to say hello. — Norm Crosby

I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception. — Tony Judt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prescott's life was changed from the accepted norm of a proper Bostonian by that crust of bread. While in his junior year at Harvard,the students one day,while eating in the Commons, turned the room into pandemonium by bombarding each other with food;in the midst of it Prescott, who turned at the call of his name, was struck by a crust of bread accurately thrown. It hit him in the open left eye,striking the unprotected pupil;it had the effect usually attending a brain concussion. When he recovered he was made instantly aware that he had lost sight of his left eye. — Victor W. Von Hagen

I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore. — Richard Rohr

Seeing Michaels treat his dog like that was the equivalent of watching how a new love interest interacted with your kids. He was amazing with Bookem and it was obvious Book liked him right back. It pulled at Judge's heart. Food wasn't the quickest way to his heart, although it helped, but Bookem was. Most men feared him and didn't want him anywhere around. Judge would simply fuck them quickly and send them on their way. Michaels was not the norm. He was partner material. Judge turned on the taps and grimaced at his next thought. Michaels was going to make some man very happy one day. Judge — A.E. Via

The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don't pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order, or a consumer good. — Michael Sandel

I owe my success to expansion pitching, a short right field fence, and my hollow bats. — Norm Cash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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