Yes Man Norman Quotes & Sayings

Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? "Only then will you understand what happened and why. "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. — Norman Maclean

War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element.... — Norman Angell

Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer has to be ready to take chances with his readers' lives. — Norman Mailer

No man is happy who does not think himself so. — Norman Vincent Peale

Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated the horrors: 'Everywhere corpses, wounded humans, dead horses . . . and hastily-dug graves.' . . . Finally food ran out, and famished Poles, as one man put it, 'cut off flesh as soon as a horse fell, leaving only the skeleton.' On September 28, Warsaw Radio replaced the polonaise with a funeral dirge.15 — Norman Davies

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead. — Dorothy Parker

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety. — Norman Mailer

The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward. — Norman Cousins

The feeling of joy came up in me again the way the lyric of a song might remind a man on the edge of insanity that soon he will be insane again and there is a world there more interesting than his own. — Norman Mailer

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother. — Norman Douglas

The natural role of the twentieth-century man is anxiety. — Norman Mailer

The man who respects a woman does not know what else to do with her. — John Norman

I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad - that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad - and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good - for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?
Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43 - why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate. — Norman Mailer

Part of living, part of becoming a wise man or a wise woman, is to get to that point where you can have a friend for whom you are genuinely happy when he or she has a success. That's tough. Very few people get to that point. With writers it's next to impossible. You can't really bless a writer who's as good as yourself. — Norman Mailer

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood. — Norman Cousins

An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. — Norman Davies

As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that. — Norman Schwarzkopf

Jesus is the only way because the Bible says it to be true. Why? Because only He can bridge the gap between God and man; there's no other way. — Norman Geisler

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself. — Norman Cousins

Has any man ever obtained inner harmony by simply reading about the experiences of others? Not since the world began has it ever happened. Each man must go through the fire himself. — Norman Douglas

It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest. — Norman Douglas

A weak and dying Messiah is the very antithesis of a man-made cure. — Norman L. Geisler

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man. — Norman Cousins

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. — Norman Mailer

Grandchildren don't make a man feel old; it's the knowledge that he's married to a grandmother. — J. Norman Collie

Norman believes in his own abilities. He believes what his parents taught him, that a clever man will rise like yeast if he is careful. He — Paul Torday

It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd. — Norman Mailer

For all my wanderings, I'm ordinary. I came to terms long ago with my littleness. A man is what he is--he can't rise so much as an inch above his shortcomings--Horatio Alger be damned! — Norman Lock

I don't know how people can easily remain Christian if they get no fellowship. They may be able to do it intellectually, but part of the body of man is composed of spirit and parts of soul and of flesh. — Larry Norman

Law Number XXIV: The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man. — Norman Ralph Augustine

A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character. — Norman Mailer

Old, is it?" the man asks.
"Yes, very."
"Pre-war, is it?"
"Yes," I say. "If by war you mean the Norman invasion. — Garrett Carr

You've seen too many movies. If you're holding a gun and you shoot a defenseless man, then you're a poor creature, a dastardly person. That's a perfectly ridiculous idea, you realize. The fact that you're holding the gun and the other man is not is no accident. It's a product of everything you've achieved, it assumes that if you're ... you're aware enough, you have the gun when you need it. — Norman Mailer

He knocked absurdly on the skull like a man impatient for a door to open. His eyes glazed over. He appeared to be in the grasp of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
'Time is slowing,' he said in a leaden voice. 'Each moment grows and fattens like a drop of rain on a window sash, waiting to fall. — Norman Lock