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Thoughts on the Common Man

Published: Jan 11, 2014 07:13:33 AM IST
Updated: Jan 8, 2014 03:38:08 PM IST
Thoughts on the Common Man
Image: Sameer Pawar

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

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

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
Abraham Lincoln

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

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

As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man.
George Bernard Shaw

I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.
Peter O’Toole

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

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent ‘the people’. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth.
Paul Johnson

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

The Common Man symbolises the mute millions of India, or perhaps the whole world, a silent spectator of marching time.
RK Laxman

(This story appears in the 24 January, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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