I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. “Exceptional” refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional. Daniel Keyes
About This Quote

This quote is about the sense of entitlement that many people have. Especially those who are gifted and those who are "illiterate." This stems from the belief that it is "special" for certain people to be able to read or write. People develop this attitude because they feel as if they deserve special treatment and attention.

Source: Flowers For Algernon

Some Similar Quotes
  1. It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. - Unknown

  2. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can. - Nicholas Sparks

  3. The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person. - Chuck Palahniuk

  4. Where there is love there is life. - Mahatma Gandhi

  5. It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted.... - Henry Rollins

More Quotes By Daniel Keyes
  1. I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

  2. A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

  3. Punctuation, is? fun!

  4. I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.

  5. I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night–in the moments before I pass off into sleep–ideas explode into...

Related Topics