Astonishing Quotes - Page 11

• Our present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence.

  Thomas Paine

  Law, Names, Perfect

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.61

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• When we look at the astonishing material achievements of the West. we see these things as the result, not of compulsion or government action or the superior wisdom of a few, but of that system of competition and free enterprise, rewarding success and penalising failure, which enables every individual to participate by his private decisions in shaping the future of his society.

  Enoch Powell

  Government, Achievement, Decision

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• That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.

  Bertrand Russell

  Plato, Should Have, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.436, Routledge

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• One way in which we can encourage the Chinese government to take more vigorous action to control food safety in their country is by just saying we're not going to buy Chinese foods until they get their system cleaned up. Admittedly it's a difficult system to get under control because an astonishing percentage - maybe 80 percent - of the foods in China are produced in small backyard operations.

  Marion Nestle

  Country, Government, Safety

  "MoJo Audio: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine". Interview with Brittney Andres, www.motherjones.com. October 21, 2008.

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• It is astonishing how foolish humans can be in groups, especially when they follow their leader without question.

  Brian Herbert

  Leader, Groups, Foolish

  Brian Herbert, Kevin Anderson (2002). “Dune: House Corrino”, p.333, Spectra

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• We are devastated to learn of the death of Alexander McQueen, one of the greatest talents of his generation. He brought a uniquely British sense of daring and aesthetic fearlessness to the global stage of fashion. In such a short career, Alexander McQueen's influence was astonishing - from street style, to music culture and the world's museums. His passing marks an insurmountable loss.

  Anna Wintour

  Fashion, Loss, Museums

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• One of the most astonishing things about Jesus is that as God he actually chose to come into our fallen, sick, twisted, unjust, evil, cruel, painful world and be with us to suffer like us and for us. Meanwhile, we spend most of our time trying to figure out how to avoid the pain and evil of this world while reading dumb books about the rapture just hoping to get out.

  Mark Driscoll

  Jesus, Pain, Reading

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• The Attorney General made another astonishing claim, that there were Pakistani terrorists possibly coming on these boats from Haiti. No one has ever seen a Pakistani coming on a boat from Haiti yet.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Haiti, Boat, Claims

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. October 1, 2003.

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• You will permit me to say, that a greater drama is now acting on this theatre than has heretofore been brought on the American tage, or any other in the world. We exhibit at present the novel and astonishing spectacle of a whole people deliberating calmly on what form of government will be most conducive to their happiness; and deciding with an unexpected degree of unanimity in favour of a system which they conceive calculated to answer the purpose.

  George Washington

  Drama, Government, People

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• I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house.

  Vilmos Zsigmond

  Thinking, Light, House

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Baby, Color, Jail

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In most of the world, we have only small remnants of the wildlife that once existed. Africa has the most astonishing wildlife still. Now Africa is modernizing. In the next twenty years, Africa is modernizing economically, and one of two things is going to happen. Either Africa will be just like the rest of the world and it's say goodbye to wildlife. Or, we can learn from the mistakes made in the rest of the world.

  Patrick Bergin

  Goodbye, Mistake, Two

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• I love the walking contradiction of the body. I want to make corporeal characters, corporeal writing, I want to bring the intensities and contradictions and beauty and violence and stench and desire and astonishing physicality of the body back into literature.

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  Writing, Character, Desire

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I found it really astonishing that undocumented migrants were kidnapped so routinely, that it was such a commonplace part of the journey for people trying to reach the US, and that we hear almost nothing about it here.

  Sarah Stillman

  Journey, People, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• After the age of seven, I began living between my dad in Alaska and my mother in Baltimore. Every three or four months, I would fly the 5,000 miles between the two. And having grown up in Alaska, Baltimore was astonishing.

  Leigh Newman

  Mother, Dad, Alaska

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One of the reasons I like to hang out with scholarly types is they can do a broad reach conceptualization of things that is astonishing to me. I'm really good at the particulars but I have to do an immense amount of critical thinking to make something larger of it.

  Lucy Corin

  Thinking, Reason, Type

  Source: therumpus.net

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• To be included in the group with women like Glenn Close and Kyra Sedgwick is a little bit astonishing to me. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as Glenn Close is just ridiculous.

  Julianna Margulies

  Groups, Littles, Ridiculous

  Source: deadline.com

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• In spite of all these disquieting triumphs in the field of natural science, it's astonishing how little man has learned about himself, and how much there is to learn. How little we know about this brain which made social evolution possible, and of the mind. How little we know of the nature and spirit of man and God. We stand now before this inner frontier of ignorance. If we could pass it, we might well discover the meaning of life and understand man's destiny.

  Wilder Penfield

  Ignorance, Destiny, Men

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• Often, when I want to read something that is satisfying to me as theology, what I actually read is string theory, or something like that - popularizations, inevitably, of scientific cosmologies - because their description of the scale of things and the intrinsic, astonishing character of reality coincides very beautifully with the most ambitious theology. It is thinking at that scale, and it is thinking that is invested with meaning in a humanly evocative form. That's theology.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Character, Reality, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Nothing of real worth can be obtained without courageous working. Man owes his growth chiefly to the active striving of the will, that encounter with difficulty which he calls effort; and it is astonishing to find how often results apparently impracticable are then made possible.

  Samuel Smiles

  Real, Men, Effort

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• We need to reverse three centuries of walling the for-profit and non-profit sectors off from one another. When you think for-profit and non-profit, you most often think of entities with either zero social return or zero return on capital and zero social return. Clearly, there's some opportunity in the spectrum between those extremes. What's missing is the for-profit finance industry coming in to that area. Look at the enormous diversity of the for-profit financial industry as opposed to monolithic nature of the non-profit world; it's quite astonishing.

  Bill Drayton

  Zero, Opportunity, Thinking

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• It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.

  Alfred P. Sloan

  Ambition, Ignorance, Energy

  Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1941). “Adventures of a White-Collar Man”

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• A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Men, Understanding, Suffering

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• For many people, Mrs. Brown has come from the middle of nowhere. But Mrs. Brown was first written for radio. I wrote it for a radio series in 1992. It was a five-minute piece for radio, and it's been absolutely astonishing.

  Brendan O'Carroll

  People, Pieces, Middle Of Nowhere

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I'm not interested in attacking, I'm interested in astonishing.

  Terry Southern

  Attacking, Not Interested

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