Top 1200 Ordinary Citizens Quotes & Sayings

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.

Transnational organized cybercriminal groups have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions and ordinary citizens.

Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.

A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

I certainly think it's very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

I have family who are British citizens and who want to be citizens of the world and citizens of the E.U.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

We must create a state that responds to the citizens' needs, and we need citizens who feel committed to their state because that state serves the citizens.

Needless to say, innumerable challenges exist in all areas of governance, and much more needs to be done to help the Afghan government assume full responsibility for addressing the concerns of ordinary Afghan citizens.

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.

We are bound by ideals that teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these ideals. Every citizen must uphold them.... I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators. Citizens, not subjects. Responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.

Many people - when they think about North Korea and the dictatorship, or the military or nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles, those things - tend to forget ordinary citizens are living there.

Italy has piled up huge public debt because the successive governments were too close to the life of ordinary citizens, too willing to please the requests of everybody, thereby acting against the interests of future generations.

I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.

There is nothing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens doing the daily work of democracy, and no problem too great to tackle with the power of active citizenship.

I think some people are not interesting to themselves. They're the sad, resigned folk. When people call themselves ordinary - "I'm just an ordinary person" - you do wonder what they mean, because people who call themselves ordinary occasionally turn out to be serial killers. Beware of those who say they're ordinary.

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.

We could have managed globalization in ways that ordinary citizens would have benefited rather than just the corporations. Trade is beneficial. There are gains to be had from taking advantage of comparative advantage and specialization. That's true, if you manage globalization right.

As ordinary citizens, we don't spend much time reading about and thinking through the creation of new laws or amendments of old ones.

The communications revolution has given millions of people both a wider and more detailed understanding of the world. Because of technology, ordinary citizens enjoy access to information that formerly was available only to elites and nation-states. One consequence of this change is that citizens have become acutely conscious of environmental destruction, entrenched poverty, health catastrophes, human rights abuses, failing education systems, and escalating violence. Another consequence is that people possess powerful communication tools to coordinate efforts to attack those problems.

The Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of us all - from ordinary citizens up to candidates for president. If we allow this precious right to be ignored when dealing with a presidential campaign, it can be ignored when dealing with the rest of us.

Juries are the constitutional institution designed to protect ordinary citizens against the wealthy and powerful.

Medicine people are truly citizens of two worlds, and those who continue to walk the path of medicine power learn to keep their balance in both the ordinary and the non-ordinary worlds.

It is impossible to deny that people in power face more temptations than ordinary citizens.

From the time of the Revolutionary War, when citizens stood forward to defend their liberties against the depredations of tyranny. All the way through Civil War, through the great World Wars, this nation has been defended by the tradition of common ordinary folks who come from behind the plow, come from the store-clerking, come from the classrooms, and so forth to get on the battlefields - ordinary citizens turned into heroes in defense of their liberty, because that's the potential of freedom.

If we want to keep farmers in business, it's time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start.

An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern state to ensure by all means necessary that its government adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically, but internationally. There are no bystanders. No one is entitled to an 'apolitical' exemption from such obligation. Where default occurs, either by citizens endorsement of official criminality or by the failure of citizens to effectively oppose it, liability is incurred by all

I'm satisfied to have an ordinary success and an ordinary life and an ordinary income. Later, I don't know.

It takes no effort to be ordinary. Ordinary is not even a challenge. You can do nothing and be ordinary.

The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.

Very often, the judgments by ordinary citizens may be better than those by professional economists, being more rooted in reality and less narrowly focused.

When Congress exercises the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, it may impose affirmative obligations on executive and judicial officers of state and local governments as well as ordinary citizens.

Judgments that give an impression that we can disregard the Constitution for political expediency, or to solve what we regard as current problems, set a dangerous precedence which will make it difficult to govern in future or to make ordinary citizens to abide by the Constitution.

For them, it was nothing but an ordinary day on an ordinary day on an ordinary weekend, but for her, there was something revelatory about the notion that wonderful moments like these existed.

Ordinary citizens are obliged and, if need be, compelled by force to meet their commitments. But let higher obligations of an international order be involved, and governments repudiate them, more often than not with a disdainful shrug of the shoulders.

It will not be enough to rely on experts. Ordinary citizens must become experts too. It will take public opinion on a wide scale to ensure that world leaders act.

Tax avoidance and evasion by the rich undermine democracy by starving social programs and public services. They also send a message to ordinary citizens that the rules of the economic game are rigged against them.

I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.

After I returned from Oxford, I spent 5-6 years in a village in Madhya Pradesh - 25 km. outside Bhopal - along with a group of people working with the communities. But, over time, we realised that there were just too many constraints, and for ordinary citizens to be the change agent was not that easy.

The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.

I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

Is this not true--That in proportion to the value of their estates the extremely wealthy pay far less taxes than those of moderatemeans? Compare the amount paid by millionaires with the amount paid by ordinary citizens. I believe that in proportion to their estates they pay less than half as much as ordinary citizens, whereas they ought to pay more.

Although I was born to famous parents, I know and feel the problems of ordinary citizens.

Ordinary citizens are so accepting of what is going on, grumbling when their material interests were affected, but seemingly accepting the spiritual poverty so characteristic of today.

What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

A wound that’d make an ordinary man unconscious, I won’t lose to it. A wound that would kill an ordinary person, I won’t lose to it! To face one who is extraordinary, Hawk Eyes - I can’t allow myself to be ordinary!

Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.

You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.

I did not come into Parliament to be a Muslim MP. And I have never set myself up as a Muslim spokesperson or community leader. Just as ordinary citizens have multiple identities, so do MPs.

There are these two strands, the Dionysian and the Appollonian, and in the same theater grew up from these folks who during the day were just ordinary citizens, and at night they would sneak off to the woods and party.

Across the nation, the election protection movement attracts ordinary citizens who educate their neighbors about their voting systems and the private companies that built and run them.

Drafts of domestic legislation must be published, debated and publicly voted on, which gives ample opportunities to civil society organizations and ordinary citizens to at least understand what's being proposed and to voice and to organize opposition before the decision is made.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker's family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

Big money buys access in Washington, and access purchases influence. It is as simple as that. And they have basically given a green light, a further green light, after Citizens United, to the biggest money to have the bigger voice in our politics, and to sound out and drown out the voice of just ordinary citizens.

Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special—and then you will be special.

Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society.

Guatemala's ornate presidential palace, once a terrifying fortress whose every corridor was patrolled by heavily armed soldiers in berets and camouflage uniforms, is now a normal public building where ordinary citizens enter without fear.