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Common Man Quotes

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Common Man Quotes

“Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.”

“Do you ever feel how unfair life can get for someone? Do you ever feel how someone feels when they are born into a poor family? When someone finds out that they have to work in a job like being a waiter/ waitress in a hotel at the age of 20 years or a office boy or office girl in an organisation? They did not have the education that you were privileged to have because you were born to parents who were smarter than the common man or woman of that time. What kind of a world are we giving to everyone? Why is this world so unfair to most people?”

“Every society had its elites, of course: its wealthy, well-educated, upwardly mobile types. Machiavelli, a republican himself, called them the grandi. The trick to preserving a republic was not to allow them to predominate as a class, to amass power at the expense of their fellows. Or more precisely: the key was not to allow them to amass power at the expense of the common man.”

“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”

“There is heroism to be found in great battles, it is true; warriors with stable knees who fight and know that they will die for an idea or for the safety of loved ones back home. But there are also people who spend their entire adulthood at a soulless job they despise to make sure their children have something to eat that night so that one day those kids may lead better, more fulfilling lives than their parents. The warrior and the worker both make sacrifices. Who, then, is more heroic? Can any of us judge? I don't think I'm qualified. I'll let history decide. But I do not think we should leave it all up to warriors and rulers to speak to the future.”

“Maxims of Ptahhotep spoke a lot of sense; 'Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.' Now THAT I’ll give the green light to. The opinions, eloquence and articulacy of the man or woman on the street can often be as invaluable as precious stones.”

“In the era of angry and aggressive policing, it is an honorable service to your fellow citizens to video record police officers interactions with the common people.”

“While police internal affairs is allowed to protect corrupt police officers that engage in unethical behaviors, illegal activities or murder, there will always be a genuine mistrust by the common people.”

“Doremus Jessup, so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. Seven years before his present credo—derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the revue Of Thee I Sing—little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the county poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors. Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said. There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect. But below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him. He could dramatize his assertion that he was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist but a Democrat—a homespun Jeffersonian-Lincolnian-Clevelandian-Wilsonian Democrat—and (sans scenery and costume) make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, the while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted Democratic inventions, every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness of Europe. Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man. Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate. But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.”

“Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.”

PeopleLoveHumansWarCountryCharacterWisdomHandsGovernmentTruthSchoolJobsLawHateHumanityPoliticsStrongFearPeaceUnderstandingPresidentLeadershipJusticeFreedomMoneyRaceEducationLeaderDarknessEnvironmentTeacherBloodTeamSocietyMankindHonestSecurityGreatnessIgnoranceInspireBooksMoralityIntegrityRepublicanSpeechDiversityWeaponsLosingRacismConscienceCapitalismCriticismDestructionHatredDoctorsLiesVoteBraveryIntelligentElectionBraveUnityDemocratEnvironmentalChaosLibraryGreedTerrorEqualityCorruptionHumbleProtectionSpendingOilImprovementToleranceDiscriminationEmploymentPeacefulAdministrationHealth CareBridgesCorporationsHuman LifePresidentialHypocrisyVotingDivisionLeadersDividesJobStabilityCensorshipHuman ConditionFairnessTolerateFreedom Of SpeechHonorableConservationPreservationLieDiplomacyBankingIncentivesSegregationSecrecyTeachersFundingBankersPolitical ScienceTransparencyDissentGreat LeaderUnderstandNationEnvironmentalismWordElectionsHeartsMonetaryLeadSchoolsCorruptTruthfulnessDoctorScrutinyLeadership CharacteristicsImmoralityDiplomaticBig BusinessLibrariesEnvironmentalistConfidentCommon ManIntellectualismBribeFamiliesGuidePublicGood LeaderLeadership TraitsPeacemakerImmaturityBipartisanGovernment CorruptionGreat LeadershipBest LeaderSlyWallsPharmaceuticalReligious ToleranceUnitingBanking SystemBailFairLawlessnessCitizenConvergenceBanksFuture LeadersCompaniesStreetVoterCriticForeign RelationsHomesIdentifyFarmerAirlinesUniteDivideMake America Great AgainPeacemakersBig PharmaEducatorsWe The PeopleBankerCensorBuild BridgesSilencing DissentDiscriminatePeacekeeperPicking SidesFor The PeopleLobbyistPharmaCriticsmGreat NationHeart DrivenBail OutFurtureIndentifiesMonetary ProfitOil TycoonPick A LeaderSelectingServes The PeopleUnitesHonest BrokerMan On The StreetMoney DrivenMortageMortagesMultinationalStreet LevelConfident LeaderDecisionmakersDecison MakersEthnic ToleranceRace Tolerance
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business.”

“When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. They feel a great, ever-rising determination to lift themselves and their children our of hunger and disease and misery, up to a higher level. Jesus started a fire upon the earth, and it is burning hot today, the fire of a new hope in the hearts of the hungry multitudes.”

“The uncommon man has done the impossible and there has been that much more light in the world because of it. Children respond to heroes by thinking creatively and sometimes in breaking beyond the bounds of the impossible in their turn, and so becoming heroes themselves.”

“The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.”