Surprising Quotes - Page 18

• It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.

  Tony Benn

  People, Political, Democracy

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• It was not surprising ....that [my father] should seldom have long seasons of agonizing prayer such as some have experienced, for His closeness to God was not limited to special seasons, but was a continuous and uninterrupted service.

  Paul Bearer

  Prayer, Father, Long

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• If you look at my life before I went into television, the struggle I went through coming out would be surprising to most people, given how comfortable and how out I am being the only late-night gay talk-show host.

  Andy Cohen

  Struggle, Gay, Night

  "Bravo's Andy Cohen shares his story in the Castro". Interview with Sarah Adler, www.sfgate.com. May 27, 2012.

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• I understand why political leaders in the beginning want to be cheerleaders to generate optimism. But to admit that they didn't understand the depths of the problem afterwards, I found a little bit surprising.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Optimism, Leader, Political

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. May 27, 2011.

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• I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.

  Peter Hedges

  Writing, Actors, Want

  Source: www.aboutfilm.com

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• If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.

  David Mamet

  Mother, Lying, Thinking

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• The most surprising and rewarding chapter to write was the Butthole Surfers chapter. I'd always thought of them as a bunch of drug-addled reprobates - which maybe they were - but it turned out to be more complicated than that.

  Michael Azerrad

  Writing, Drug, Complicated

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• It's surprising to a lot of people because ballerinas look so long, but it's more of a proportion thing. Their legs are long in proportion to their body but in reality they're very tiny.

  Mary Elizabeth Winstead

  Reality, Long, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If you look at what Ben Affleck has gone on to do, as an actor and as a director, it's extraordinary. But if you look back at his career, I don't think it's surprising. From Good Will Hunting on down, the guy is a monster talent, and I think talent wins out, in the end. There's always the ebb and flow of any career, but I think talent wins out, in the end.

  Joseph McGinty Nichol

  Winning, Thinking, Hunting

  Source: collider.com

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• With the Israel stories, it was for me the most surprising way the title would fit in. I kept thinking about, for a lot of my Israeli characters, what it was like to inherit such a complicated and symbiotic relationship to America and to feel how tangled that is, and it's nothing that they chose to do themselves.

  Molly Antopol

  Character, Thinking, Israel

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If I look at my own recordings, I think generally there is a focal point within the song and often it's the instrumental bridge or a guitar solo where we try to do something unexpected, something beautiful or weird, or beautiful because it is weird. And of course I fail half the time, but yes that is the goal, to create even a few seconds of bliss, or sadness. The electric guitar is a great instrument for doing this because it is capable of surprising you. There are so many different sounds available.

  Dean Wareham

  Beautiful, Song, Sadness

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Character, Sleep, Political

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.93

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• So here's my advice to city planners. Make your city runnable. Runners are the first wave of troops bringing human activity back to the urban core of any city. Where we go, others will follow. The connection between runnability and livability is so clear (at least to me), that it's surprising that new developments consistently leave pathways out of the plans.

  Don Kardong

  Cities, Advice, Pathways

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• The responsibility for change...lies within us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical.

  Alvin Toffler

  Lying, Teaching, Responsibility

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• It's surprising how many people get bogged down in analysing, planning, and organizing when what they really need to do is take action.

  Jack Canfield

  People, Needs, Action

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• The best moments involve a loss of control. It's a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly often - completely surprising combinations that make a higher kind of sense, that come to you out of nowhere. But rarely for extended periods, for paragraphs and pages - I think poets must have more access to this state than novelists do.

  Don DeLillo

  Loss, Thinking, Novelists

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• Creativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.

  George Gilder

  Creativity, Ideas, Creative

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• We have never recognized that Iran lives in a dangerous neighborhood. And it's not surprising that they want some protection. We have not been forthcoming about explaining a security relationship for the region, in which Iran can feel secure and thus maybe willing to do something.

  Brent Scowcroft

  Iran, Want, Protection

  Source: www.nytimes.com

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• I'm a person who's been in a long-term relationship. It's not surprising that a lot of my friends - whether they're in same-sex relationships or not, whether they're married officially or just in a long-term relationship - have really interesting and various stages in their relationship. My life is looking at these friendships and saying, "Wait a minute, isn't this something really interesting? How can I explore this?"

  Sarah Jessica Parker

  Sex, Long, Interesting

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• The improv stuff, that's always surprising so a lot of times that's really funny.

  Ed Helms

  Stuff

  Source: movies.about.com

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• Once we begin to flee the things that threaten and burden us, there is no end to fleeing. God's solution is surprising. He offers rest. But it's a unique form of rest. It's to rest in him in the midst of our threats and our burdens. It's discovering, as David did in seasons of distress, that God is our rock and refuge right in the thick of our situation.

  Mark Buchanan

  Unique, Rocks, Fleeing

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• For the US, GPS are a form of sovereignty! It is hardly surprising, then, that the EU has proposed its own GPS in order to be able to localize and to compete with the American GPS.

  Paul Virilio

  Gps, Order, Able

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I don't suggest that the observations are surprising or profound. Rather, they seem to me the merest truisms. I was not aware that [ Michel] Foucault had used the phrase "speaking truth to power." I had thought it was an old Quaker phrase.

  Noam Chomsky

  Profound, Phrases, Quaker

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's prevailing power, and the frequent result is the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, defeated. Surprising numbers of people are willing to settle for lives like that.

  Bill Hybels

  Cutting, Numbers, People

  Bill Hybels, Dale Larsen, Sandy Larsen (1994). “Prayer: Too Busy Not to Pray”, p.11, InterVarsity Press

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• Dangle something in front of the camera. Get something surprising to be released.

  William Wegman

  Cameras, Fronts

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