I assure you, it would be much more pleasant for me to be an ordinary voter in peaceful Chechnya than the president of a republic at war.
If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.
The Constitution was made for ordinary people.
Juries are the constitutional institution designed to protect ordinary citizens against the wealthy and powerful.
I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.
I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.
This Constitution does not reflect the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. It does nothing for jobs or economic growth and widens further still the democratic deficit.
Women of all classes are awakening to the necessity of self-support, but few are willing to do the ordinary useful work for which they are fitted.
Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language.
I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.
King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
Ordinary Catholics are praying when they do not think they are. They are praying when they offer implicitly all they are doing to God.
Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
I was just an ordinary student. I'd always gotten along with authorities quite well.
What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited.
An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old.
The country is stronger than the result of any one election. But we shouldn't forget that these are just ordinary people. I wish Americans would look at them level, not down or up - just level. It doesn't take some special dimension to be president.
There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.
Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day.
Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still afford. Above all, it isn't a mass medium: Live theater is a small-scale, handmade art form. Intimacy is what makes it special.
I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?
Coming from a farming background, I saw nothing out of the ordinary in running barefoot, although it seemed to startle the rest of the athletics world. I have always enjoyed going barefoot and when I was growing up I seldom wore shoes, even when I went into town.
I just want to go to university and have fun - I want to be an ordinary student. I'm only going to university. It's not like I'm getting married - though that's what it feels like sometimes.
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.
That's important to me, to find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.
When two people first meet, they can only have a very ordinary kind of friendship. But when you begin to understand each other, when you get close to them, you discover that you're suddenly eager to know him or her even better.
I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation.
The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.
Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.
The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war.
You can always find people, ordinary people, who will support your particular view, so it becomes a politics of personality, especially at the presidential level. People often go for somebody that they like or somebody that they can identify with.
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
Good and productive labor is valuable, and it doesn't mean you have to have a fancy job description. You don't have to become rich. You can be ordinary. Happiness lies there. Do good work, create good work for others.
