Astonishing Quotes - Page 9

• By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty.

  Dennis Prager

  Moving, Government, People

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• Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it as a brute fact....I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.

  Paul Davies

  Drama, Believe, Fate

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• If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people's minds and motives are finally revealed.

  Pamela Druckerman

  Thinking, Worry Less, People

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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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• 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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• 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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• For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.

  Henry Rollins

  Memories, Speed, Los Angeles

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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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• 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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• 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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• This very moment of your life, if you experience it fully, will show you astonishing wonders and exquisite delights.

  Martha Beck

  Delight, Wonder, Moments

  "Fighting FOMO: 3 Strategies To Beat Your Fear Of Missing Out" by Martha Beck, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 2, 2013.

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• Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all.

  Bruce Beresford

  Hats, Mexico, Photograph

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• You are lovable. Can you show me any baby in any nursery who isn't priceless? No. There's no such thing as a worthless newborn. And the essential value that was born into brand-new-baby you can never be extinguished. This means that even if you think you're being absolutely honest, believing yourself to be anything other than astonishing, incomparable, and infinitely precious makes you a habitual liar.

  Martha Beck

  Baby, Liars, Believe

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• This is the centre of the gospel - this is what the Garden of Gethsemane and Good Friday are all about - that God has done astonishing and costly things to draw us near.

  John Piper

  Friday, Garden, Done

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• It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Religion, Ordinary

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.

  Daniel Webster

  Mind, Intellectual, Theatre

  Daniel Webster, Edwin Percy Whipple (2001). “The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster”, p.131, Beard Books

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• Death is, in some ways, unacceptable. It's just an astonishing fact of our being here that we die; but I think worse than that is if we live long enough, we lose everyone we love in this world. I mean people die and disappear, and we're left with this stark mystery: just the sheer not knowing of what happened to them.

  Sam Harris

  Mean, Thinking, Knowing

  "Sam Harris On Death". Big Think, July 4, 2007.

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• ... by far the most astonishing guitar player ever has got to be Django Reinhardt ... Django was quite superhuman, There's nothing normal about him as a person or a player.

  Jeff Beck

  Player, Django, Guitar

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• Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Sometimes, Colleagues, Performances

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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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• I have often wondered how anyone who does not read, by which I mean daily, having some book going all the time, can make it through life. Indeed if I were required to make a sharp division in the very nature of people, I would be tempted to make it there: readers and nonreaders of books... It is astonishing how the presence or absence of this habit so consistently characterizes an individual in other respects; it is as though it were a kind of barometer of temperament, of personality, even of character. Aside from that, for me it constituted something like sanity insurance.

  William Brinkley

  Book, Character, Mean

  William Brinkley (2013). “The Last Ship: A Novel”, p.65, Penguin

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• The more you behave like you have the right to exist in the world without interference, the less others will question it. The power of a fait accompli is astonishing. The more people see fat bodies moving and being physical and doing whatever makes them happy in the world, without apology and without shame, the more they get used to seeing that and thinking of it as normal.

  Hanne Blank

  Moving, Apology, Thinking

  Hanne Blank (2012). “The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts”, p.48, Ten Speed Press

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• It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens.

  Carl Rogers

  Elements, Passing Judgment, Seems

  Carl Rogers (1995). “A Way of Being”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

  Luc Ferrari

  Character, Thinking, Way

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• In the clearness of this Himalayan air, mountains draw near, and in such splendor, tears come quietly to my eyes and cool on my sunburned cheeks.  this is not mere soft-mindedness, nor am I all that silly with the altitude.  My head has cleared in these weeks free of intrusions- mail, telephones, people and their needs- and I respond to things spontaneously, without defensive or self-conscious screens.  Still, all this feeling is astonishing: not so long ago I could say truthfully that I had not shed a tear in twenty years.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Silly, Eye, Long Ago

  Peter Matthiessen (2008). “The Snow Leopard”, p.138, Penguin

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