Shock Quotes - Page 20

• So Republican candidates bash Obamacare and move up in the polls. Given that public opinion remains firmly against the health care law - as it has been for years - that's not a shock. Democratic beliefs to the contrary are probably wishful thinking.

  Byron York

  Moving, Thinking, Years

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• If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Taken, Glasses, Doubt

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin, William Duane (1834). “Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin”, p.258

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• I was in a very deep state of shock after that. I had raised my horse since he was six months old and he was more like a child to me, so I took it very hard. They never caught who did it and the stable did a great job of covering facts up so it couldn't be proved that it was the direct result of the article, but the coincidence was striking.

  Jeff Miller

  Horse, Jobs, Children

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• If our education had included training to bear unpleasantness and to let the first shock pass until we could think more calmly, many an apparently unbearable situation would become manageable, and many a nervous illness avoided. There is proverb expressing this. It says, trouble is a tunnel thorough which we pass and not a brick wall against which we must break our head.

  Claire Weekes

  Education, Wall, Thinking

  "Hope and Help for Your Nerves".

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• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, War, Thinking

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.14, Penguin

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• His letter was like the shock produced by a cold bath.

  Duff Green

  Heart, Letters, Baths

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• Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks - those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need

  David Cameron

  Growth, Energy, Needs

  Prime Minister’s address at the launch of the Department of Energy and Climate Change's (DECC) new Energy Efficiency Mission, February, 2013.

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• I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

  Thom Gunn

  Book, Reading, Bisexual

  Thom Gunn (2017). “Selected Poems of Thom Gunn”, p.177, Faber & Faber

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• Triumphs against the natural order of living exact unforeseen payments. At the same time that man attempts to straighten a crooked nature, he is striving to annihilate space, which seems but another phase of the war against substance. We ignore the fact that space and matter are shock absorbers; the more we diminish them the more we reduce our privacy and security.

  Richard M. Weaver

  War, Men, Order

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.155, University of Chicago Press

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• Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.

  Anne Rice

  Art, Madmen, Meant To Be

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• You almost believe that you will never come to the end of a roll of tape; and when you do, there is a feeling, nearly, though very briefly, of shock and grief.

  Nicholson Baker

  Life, Grief, Believe

  Nicholson Baker (2010). “Mezzanine”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

  Simone Weil

  Pain, Mean, Space

  "Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)".

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• Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

  Max Planck

  Science, Troops, Accounts

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• Remember that a man, a true man, never hates. His rages and his bad moods never last beyond the present moment-like electric shocks.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Hate, Men, Electric Shock

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• Cruelty to men and to the lower animals as well, which would have passed unnoticed a century ago, now shocks the sensibilities and is regarded as wicked and degrading.

  Elihu Root

  Animal, Men, Aggravation

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• Only artists without talent try to shock people.

  Nobuyoshi Araki

  Artist, People, Trying

  "Crossing Boundaries: An Interview with Nobuyoshi Araki". Interview with Hyewon Yi, quod.lib.umich.edu. October 28, 2010.

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• The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

  Susan Sontag

  Atrocities, Firsts, Surprise

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.21, Macmillan

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• Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Men, Discovery, Innovation

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• Ah, but you, Darkness, you know all this. I tell you night after night. Nothing will shock you. Maybe I go on at you in the hope that there's something beyond you. Some nights I sit here and talk and sob and stare out into the blackness thinking that if I look hard enough I'll see the light behind. But I stay out until the break of day, waiting, hoping, and there's only sunrise again.

  Tim Winton

  Art, Night, Thinking

  Tim Winton (2011). “In the Winter Dark”, p.108, Pan Macmillan

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• Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.

  Susan Sontag

  Photograph, Novel, Shows

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.20, Macmillan

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• The habit of quietly absorbing the shocks will be quite a great help to stabilize pure awareness.
  The technique is: Just feel not disturbed.
  The disturbing influence could be a blessing of Mother Nature to develop the habit to make
  best use out of every situation.
  Every situation is God Sent. With this supreme wisdom of life any situation can be used
  to our advantage and regarded as a blessing of Mother Nature.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  Mother, Blessing, Technique

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• Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Dream, Art, Twilight

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• Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It's a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It's also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend-even a friend whose name it never knew.

  George W. Bush

  Memories, Loss, Sacrifice

  The World Will Always Remember 9/11, delivered 11 December 2011

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• Color me! Accessorize me! Shock me!

  Anna Dello Russo

  Color

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• I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Please Me, Inspire, Delight

  Anthony Bourdain (2013). “Kitchen Confidential”, p.18, A&C Black

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