Abnormal Quotes:

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.

- Ambrose Bierce

topic: Independent, Abnormal, Matter, Lexicographer, Resemblance

Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.

- Anais Nin

topic: Joy, Twists, Abnormal, Perversion

It's an abnormal world I live in. I don't belong anywhere. It's like I'm floating down the middle. I'm never quite sure where I am.

- Arthur Ashe

topic: Justice, Floating, Abnormal

Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable.

- Asger Jorn

topic: Abnormal, Originality, Unreasonable

In the theory of gender I began from zero. There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet. But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.

- Camille Paglia

topic: Zero, Identity, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

When your results are good, you are obviously going to have a lot of press. And when you start to falter a little bit, you are going to have some criticism, and there is nothing abnormal in that.

- Carlos Ghosn

topic: Criticism, Abnormal, Littles

I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia, an abnormal decrease of sugar in the blood. Eventually I learned to eat five small meals a day. Now if I'm making a movie and get hungry, I call time out to eat some crackers

- Carol Alt

topic: Blood, Meals, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.

- Clarence Darrow

topic: Men, Intelligent, Abnormal, Defective, Above And Below

Abnormal is so common, it's practically normal.

- Cory Doctorow

source: Cory Doctorow (2010). “Little Brother”, p.121, Macmillan

topic: Abnormal, Normal, Common

Disease is the abnormal performance of certain functions; the abnormal activity has its causes.

- Daniel D. Palmer

topic: Abnormal, Disease, Causes

In those same decades, most UFO sightings were made in the daytime and frequently at close range, when shapes and surface features could be distinguished, thus making positive identification of normal sights easier and the descriptions of unusual sights more detailed. When all normal explanations had been eliminated, the witnesses could concentrate on those aspects of the experience which were most abnormal.

- Don Berliner

topic: Sight, Abnormal, Shapes

These abnormal aspects included the shapes of UFOs and their behavior. Most of the UFOs seen in the daytime were said to have had simple geometric shapes-discs, ovals, spheres, cylinders-and surfaces that looked like metal. Such shapes are not only nonexistent among known aircraft, but contrary to all known theories of flight, in most cases offering control and performance disadvantages rather than advantages.

- Don Berliner

topic: Simple, Offering, Abnormal, Cylinders, Discs

We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.

- Edward Abbey

topic: Sick, Abnormal, Normal

She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.

- Gertrude Stein

topic: Interesting, Abnormal, Complicated

It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal.

- Gilberto Hernandez

topic: School, Artist, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

Not everything that steps out of line, and thus "abnormal", must necessarily be "inferior".

- Hans Asperger

source: "Neurotribes review - the evolution of our understanding of autism" by Saskia Baron, www.theguardian.com. August 23, 2015.

topic: Autism, Abnormal, Lines, Aspergers, Abnormality

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal

- Isabelle Huppert

source: Interview with Christopher Cook, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2001.

topic: Character, Tragedy, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

Anger and violence in Gaza and among Gazans is completely predictable. In a situation like ours, the absence of violence and anger would be abnormal. All of of us feel angry at least occasionally.

- Izzeldin Abuelaish

topic: Would Be, Abnormal, Violence, Gaza

Every single word you have spoken is sharp, sarcastic and twisted. When I thought you were abnormal you suddenly turned out to be normal. When I thought you were normal you turned out to be abnormal.

- Jae Hee

topic: Sarcastic, Drama, Abnormal

Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If, however, you force him to look into it, he'll at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be.

- James Agate

source: October 14, 1932 entry in "Ego". Book by James Agate, 1935.

topic: Looks, Abnormal, Force

You can't be normal and expect abnormal returns.

- Jeffrey Pfeffer

source: Jeffrey Pfeffer (1998). “The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First”, p.9, Harvard Business Press

topic: Abnormal, Return, Normal

I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior.

- Jerry Falwell

topic: Stress, Men, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

Jealousy is the fear of losing the thing you love most. It's very normal. Suspicion is the thing that's abnormal.

- Jerry Hall

source: "Jerry Hall: Tall Tales of Texas". Interview with Bob Colacello and Andy Warhol, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 22, 1978.

topic: Abnormal, Losing, Suspicion, Things You Love

I guess I'm attracted to these off beat roles because my life has been a bit abnormal. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

- Johnny Depp

topic: Roles, Abnormal, Problem, Normal And Abnormal

These are friendships that these girls are making that will be a lifetime and they're doing things that are so abnormal and to such a high level, that there's a bond that's like no other.

- Kim Zmeskal

topic: Girl, Abnormal, Levels

The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.

- Kobo Abe

topic: Abnormal, World, Frightening

I thought it was something peculiar to me. I thought I was abnormal.

- Louise Brown

topic: Peculiar, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

- Marcel Proust

topic: Abnormal, States

Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives. Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

topic: Poison, Abnormal, Problem, Inner Life, Paralysis

May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman.

- Mary MacLane

topic: Animal, May, Abnormal, Virtuous Woman

...if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing

- Michel Foucault

topic: Sick, Abnormal, Facts, Being Sick

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.

- Morton Feldman

source: Morton Feldman (2006). “Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964-1987”

topic: Feelings, Events, Abnormal

I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.

- Patricia Highsmith

topic: Character, Abnormal, Littles, Abnormality, Arresting

Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom.

- Paul Brunton

topic: Taken, Abnormal, Hunger

Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.

- Paul Fussell

topic: Way, Abnormal, Feels

Al Gore's performances could be a case study in abnormal-psychology classes.

- Rich Lowry

topic: Class, Psychology, Abnormal, Case Studies, Abnormal Psychology

If you feel bad at 10 miles, you're in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you're normal. If you don't feel bad at 26 miles, you're abnormal.

- Robert de Castella

topic: Bad Day, Abnormal, Trouble, Marathon Running, Half Marathons

Less volatile stocks tend to have negative abnormal profits; more volatile stocks tend to have positive abnormal profits.

- Robert Haugen

source: "The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why". Book by Robert Haugen, ch. 11, The Negative Payoff to Risk, p. 113, 1999.

topic: Negative, Abnormal, Profit

I go out into America, and I am literally navigating a minefield. Godliness has become abnormal.

- Si Robertson

topic: America, Abnormal, Godliness, Minefields

Is anyone human actually normal? I'm beginning to think being normal is actually abnormal.

- Simone Elkeles

topic: Thinking, Normal, Abnormal

It's sad that the most glorious of sexual experiences can make us feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and abnormal.

- Sue Johanson

topic: Abnormal, Guilty, Ashamed, Normal And Abnormal

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

- Tom G. Palmer

topic: Choices, Adults, Abnormal, Ambulance, Normal And Abnormal

Guardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves.

- Tom G. Palmer

source: Tom G. Palmer (2009). “Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice”, p.35, Cato Institute

topic: Children, Choices, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

I have been putting words like 'abnormal' and 'deviant' in quotes because those categorizations are under fire now, the boundary between normal and abnormal as questionable now as are all the other boundaries that once defined social reality.

- Walter Truett Anderson

topic: Reality, Fire, Abnormal, Categorization, Questionable

Young normal tigers do not eat people. If eaten by a tiger you may rest assured he was abnormal.

- Will Cuppy

source: Will Cuppy, P. G. Wodehouse (2005). “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”, p.107, David R. Godine Publisher

topic: People, Abnormal, May

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

- William James

topic: Philosophical, Understanding, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

The most appropriate type of daily life for me was a day-by-day world destruction; peace was the most difficult and abnormal state to live in.

- Yukio Mishima

topic: Abnormal, World, Daily Life, World Destruction

I think the thing that music can do is be unsettling. It is abnormal - music that's perceived to be different in an unresolved or unusual way.

- Bear McCreary

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: Thinking, Abnormal, Way

Great performers are, by definition, abnormal; they strive throughout their entire careers to separate themselves from the pack.

- John Eliot

topic: Careers, Achievement, Abnormal

My work involves the physical manifestation of emotional reality. Thus, the invisible becomes visible; the normal, abnormal; and the familiar, unfamiliar. Ordinary life is an endless source of fascination to me in its ritualistic objects and behavior.

- Sandy Skoglund

topic: Reality, Emotional, Abnormal, Unfamiliar

All life pulsates in time to the Earth and our artificial fields cause abnormal reactions in all organisms... Increasing electropollution could set in motion irreversible changes leading to our extinction.

- Robert O. Becker

topic: Phones, Abnormal, Earth

An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.

- Leo Tolstoy

source: graf Leo Tolstoy, Nathan Haskell Dole (1911). “The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï”

topic: Abnormal, Mania, Grandeur, Unintelligent

They're called in the Scripture the Beatitudes. You know why they're called the Beatitudes without being prestigious? Because they should be the attitudes of every believer. That's the normal Christian life, not the abnormal Christian life. The normal Christian life is holiness.

- Leonard Ravenhill

topic: Christian, Attitude, Abnormal, Prestigious

In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.

- Stefan Zweig

source: "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

topic: Understanding, Suffering, Abnormal

With the Fall all became abnormal. It is not just that the individual is separated from God by his true moral guilt, but each of us is not what God made us to be. Beyond each of us as individuals, human relationships are not what God meant them to be. And beyond that, nature is abnormal - the whole cause-and-effect significant history is now abnormal. To say it another way: there is much in history now which should not be.

- Francis Schaeffer

source: Francis August Schaeffer (1982). “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of spirituality”

topic: Fall, Guilt, Abnormal

Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.

- Frank Zappa

source: Interview on Channel 4, June 1, 1983.

topic: Two, Abnormal, Steps

Well Mike, I'm abnormal.

- Frank Zappa

topic: Atheism, Abnormal, Wells

Testosterone Poisoning: … Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’

- Alan Alda

topic: Men, Suffering, Abnormal, Man Hater, Misandry

This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.

- Alan Greenspan

topic: People, Abnormal, May, Configuration

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

- Alan Greenspan

topic: Long, Risk, Abnormal, Long Haul

We call someone a saint in a world in which everyone is abnormal. The normal person becomes extraordinary. But there's nothing extraordinary about being a saint, that's just someone who's somewhat online with life.

- Frederick Lenz

topic: Saint, Abnormal, World

I don't think I'm abnormal and I think that lets people down.

- Joanna Newsom

topic: Thinking, People, Abnormal

There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm.

- Marcel Proust

source: 1921A' la recherche du temps perdu,'Sodome et Gomorrhe'.

topic: Abnormal, Homosexuality, Normal And Abnormal

Le bonheur est dans l'amour un e tat anormal. In love, happiness is abnormal.

- Marcel Proust

topic: Abnormal, Amour, L Amour

I despise my own hypersensitiveness, which requires so much reassurance. It is certainly abnormal to crave so much to be loved and understood.

- Anais Nin

topic: Abnormal, Reassurance, Despise

I'm afraid you can't create tragedy out of abnormal psychology.

- Andrew Sarris

source: Andrew Sarris (1970). “Confessions of a cultist: on the cinema, 1955-1969”, Simon & Schuster

topic: Psychology, Tragedy, Abnormal, Abnormal Psychology

I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.

- Mark Haddon

topic: Car, Mind, Abnormal, Bonnets

Benedict XVI kept saying that homosexuals are deviant. They're not deviant. They're deviant only if you say that anyone who is different from me is abnormal.

- John Shelby Spong

source: Source: www.thinkpiecepublishing.com

topic: Different, Abnormal, Homosexual, Benedict Xvi, Deviants

It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust, and fear.

- H. P. Lovecraft

source: H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “Complete Collection Of H. P. Lovecraft - 150 eBooks With 100+ Audiobooks (Complete Collection Of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays And Collaborations)”, p.555, Ageless Reads

topic: Fear, Hot, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.

- Vance Havner

topic: People, Church, Abnormal

Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly.

- Joseph Sobran

topic: Sacrifice, Would Be, Abnormal

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

- Henry Adams

source: Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.408, Booklassic

topic: Bullying, Energy, Abnormal, Normal And Abnormal

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

- Benedict Cumberbatch

topic: Abnormal, Appetite, Wells, Normal And Abnormal

The person who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and so the person who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is abnormal.

- Wallace D. Wattles

source: Wallace D. Wattles (2015). “Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection – 10 Books in One Volume: The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Well, The Science of Being Great, How to Get What You Want and more: From one of the New Thought pioneers, author of Making of the Man Who Can or How to Promote Yourself and New Science of Living and Healing or Health Through New Thought and Fasting”, p.10, e-artnow

topic: Desire, Doe, Abnormal, Desire To Live

Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.

- E. O. Wilson

topic: Law, Environmental, Abnormal, Abnormality

I didn't want us to abnormal. I didn't want all this chaos and underworld crap... but that's where we'd come from. The choas was part of us. Part of what we were. And I was afraid if we lost it completely, we might lose part of ourselves.

- Kevin Brooks

topic: Abnormal, Want, Might

Our educational system basically strives for normal-which is too bad. Sometimes the exceptional is classified as abnormal and pushed aside.

- Neil Young

topic: Education, Learning, Abnormal

Nothing is wonderful except in the abnormal, and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.

- C. S. Lewis

source: C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.10, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

topic: Abnormal, Wonderful, Norm

Peabody, you never cease to amaze me." "One day I'll tell you about my granny and her five lovers." "Five lovers isn't abnormal for a woman's lifetime." "Not in her lifetime; last month. All at the same time." Peabody glanced up, deadpan. "She's ninety-eight. I hope to take after her.

- Nora Roberts

topic: Eight, One Day, Abnormal, Ninety Eight

We have not yet made violence against women abnormal, extraordinary, unacceptable. We have not yet come to see it as a pathological issue.

- Eve Ensler

topic: Issues, Abnormal, Violence

Why did I become a Canadian citizen? Not because I was rejecting being a U.S. citizen. At the time when I became a Canadian citizen, you couldn't be a dual citizen. Now you can. So I had to be one or the other. But the reason I became a Canadian citizen was because it simply seemed so abnormal to me not to be able to vote.

- Jane Jacobs

source: Source: www.metropolismag.com

topic: Abnormal, Able, Citizens

What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.

- Oscar Wilde

source: Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.35, Wordsworth Editions

topic: Art, Things In Life, Abnormal