Commonplace Quotes

Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.

If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

The concern is over what will happen as strong encryption becomes commonplace with all digital communications and stored data. Right now the use of encryption isn't all that widespread, but that state of affairs is expected to change rapidly.

It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.

Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

Ya know, I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald's. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing - a hamburger and fries to go - but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.

Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Most remarks that are worth making are commonplace remarks. The things that makes them worth saying is that we really mean them.

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

I have been in teen shows for years, so doing that stuff - kissing - is kind of commonplace and not a big deal. It was way more cool just because it was Meg Ryan.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace! Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered myself a popular artist.