Quotations about:
    normalcy


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Men’s ideas are like card-playing or any other game. Ideas which in the past I’ve seen considered reckless have since become commonplace, almost trivial, and adopted by men unworthy of sharing them. Ideas which now seem extraordinary will be regarded feeble and perfectly ordinary by our descendants.
 
[Les idées des hommes sont comme les cartes et autres jeux. Des idées que j’ai vu autrefois regarder comme dangereuses et trop hardies, sont depuis devenues communes, et presque triviales, et ont descendu jusqu’à des hommes peu dignes d’elles. Quelques-unes de celles à qui nous donnons le nom d’audacieuses seront vues comme faibles et communes par nos descendans.]

Nicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 145 (1795) [tr. Parmée (2003), ¶ 115]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Men’s ideas are like cards and other games. Ideas which I remember to have seen regarded as dangerous and over-bold have since become commonplace and almost trite, and have descended to men little worthy of them. So it is that some of the ideas which to-day we call audacious will be considered feeble and conventional by our descendants.
[tr. Hutchinson (1902), "The Cynic's Breviary"]

Man's ideas are like card & other games. Ideas which I once heard stigmatised as dangerous and over-daring have since become common and even trivial, and have sunk to be the tenets of quite unworthy persons. Some ideas which we call audacious nowadays will seem feeble and ordinary to our descendants.
[tr. Mathers (1926)]

The ideas of men are like cards and other games. ideas that at one time, to my own knowledge, were considered dangerous and rash, have since become general, almost commonplace, and have descended to men who are little worthy of them. Some of those that we call daring will seem feeble and ordinary to our descendants.
[tr. Merwin (1969)]

The ideas of men are like cards and other games. Some ideas, which formerly I observed to be considered dangerous and intemperate, have since become universal, even trivial, and have been adopted by men scarcely worthy of them. Some notions which we call bold will be regarded as feeble and commonplace by our descendants.
[tr. Pearson (1973)]

 
Added on 27-Jan-25 | Last updated 27-Jan-25
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It’s great to be great but it’s great to be human.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1930-02-28), “Daily Telegram”
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Added on 26-Mar-24 | Last updated 30-Aug-24
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I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
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Added on 18-Jan-24 | Last updated 21-Feb-25
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Next t’ a circus ther haint nothin’ that packs up an’ tears out any quicker’n th’ Christmus spirit.

[Next to a circus, there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit.]

Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard (1868-1930) American caricaturist and humorist
Abe Martin’s Back Country Sayings, ch. 7 (1917)
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Often misquoted as "tears out faster than".
 
Added on 27-Dec-21 | Last updated 27-Dec-21
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The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Epilogue (1963)
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Hostis humani generis (Latin for "enemy of humanity") was an admiralty legal term indicating that slavers, pirates, and terrorists were held beyond legal protection and were a legitimate target of any nation.
 
Added on 21-Jul-20 | Last updated 17-May-22
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Normal is the average of deviance.

Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944) American author, playwright
Venus Envy, ch. 21 (1993)
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Added on 23-Oct-17 | Last updated 23-Oct-17
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The only people who can still strike us as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.

Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Course of Love, “Irreconcilable Desires” (2016)
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Added on 20-Jul-17 | Last updated 20-Jul-17
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In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.

Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) English cleric and author
(Attributed)
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Quoted in The Friends' Intelligencer (24 Jun 1882).
 
Added on 18-Jul-17 | Last updated 18-Jul-17
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People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there is any hope for them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Circles,” Essays: First Series (1841)
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Added on 20-Feb-17 | Last updated 20-Feb-17
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I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention and labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a great poet.

Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #113 (9 Oct 1746)
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Added on 7-May-15 | Last updated 18-Oct-22
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Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
Notebooks: 1942-1951, Notebook 4, Jan 1942 – Sep 1945 [tr. O’Brien/Thody (1963)
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Cited as "B.B."
 
Added on 12-Jan-15 | Last updated 16-May-22
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Do as most do; and few will speak ill of thee.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 135 (1725)
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Added on 3-Apr-09 | Last updated 13-Mar-24
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