Common Man Quotes

Greatness, generally speaking, is an unusual quantity of a usual quality grafted upon a common man.
- William Allen White

Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.
- M T Anderson

The greatest service we can do the common man is to abolish him and make all men uncommon.
- Norman Angell

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.
- William Beveridge

There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.
- Ernest Bevin

I am no one special. Just a common man with common thoughts. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I've loved another with all my heart and soul and for me that has always been enough.
- Nicholas Sparks

i am nothing special. just a common man with common thoughts,and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicaated to me and my name will soon be forgotten,but I've loved another with all my heart and soul and for me that has always been enough.
- Nicholas Sparks

I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
- Nicholas Sparks

I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life.But I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
- Nicholas Sparks

You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.
- George Bernard Shaw

I play a guy who believes he's a king. He's the most common man in the world; in fact his family, like his suits, are just make-up. It's about dysfunctional people and dysfunctional relationships.
- James Caan

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.
- Raymond Chandler

... if gold rust, what then will iron do?/ For if a priest be foul in whom we trust/ No wonder that a common man should rust...
- Geoffrey Chaucer

For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust,
No wonder is a common man should rust
-The Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales-
- Geoffrey Chaucer

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.
- Confucius

A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.
- Confucius

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.
- Frank Delaney

It makes logical sense that 168 is a greater number than 17, so why would you shelve 168 first? Because a librarian is always right. To the common man, this looks wrong, but to the librarian, this is right, because a librarian is never wrong.
- Scott Douglas

...Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God.
- T S Eliot

I am just a common man who is true to his beliefs.
- John Wooden

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.
- Herbert Hoover

The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.
- Criss Jami

Heroes may be less than heroic, while the common man saves the day.
- Barbara Kingsolver

I am the common man. I'm polite, I love my family and I play by the rules. And sometimes I get pushed around. That's my lifestyle, and that's what I try to bring to characters.
- Eugene Levy

If we reject science, we reject the common man.
- Naguib Mahfouz

I understand the common man because I understand me in that regard at least.
- Vince Mcmahon

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.
- Ludwig Von Mises

Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.
- Ludwig Von Mises

The life and liberty and property and happiness of the common man throughout the world are at the absolute mercy of a few persons whom he has never seen, involved in complicated quarrels that he has never heard of.
- Gilbert Murray

I wanted to look at the upper-middle-class scene since the war, and in particular my generation's part in it. We had spent our early years as privileged members of a privileged class. How were we faring in the Age of the Common Man? How ought we to be faring?
- Simon Raven

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.
- Mark Rylance

The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.
- George Santayana

In a pre-scientific society the best the common man can do is pin his faith on a leader and give him his support, trusting in his benevolence against the misuse of the delegated power and in his wisdom to govern justly and make war successfully.
- B F Skinner

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
- Henry A Wallace

(...) my money guy Richard is going without a tie now, like a politician who wants to appeal to the suffering common man (or perhaps every morning his firm takes the ties and shoelaces away from the brokers and financial planners to keep them from offing themselves)
- Jess Walter

I have no concern for the common man except that he should not be so common.
- Angus Wilson