Shock Quotes - Page 28

• The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Heart, Men, Two

  The Nation, August 31, 1927.

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• It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.

  Thomas Sowell

  Clever, Mean, Common Sense

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.328, Hoover Press

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• When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity.

  Claude Debussy

  Past, Symphony, Listening

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• I can give you the cause of anaphylactic shock in a nutshell.

  Gary Delaney

  Giving, Causes, I Can

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• It is in our nature to enjoy atrocity so long as it continues to shock and remains comfortably removed from our own lives.

  Paula Marantz Cohen

  Long, Atrocities, Enjoy

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• Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Book, Reading, Giving

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.729, Library of America

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• There are some men whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul.

  William McFee

  Men, Emotional, Hands

  William McFee (1921). “Harbours of Memory”

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• Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Real, Black, President

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• Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.

  George Soros

  Country, Swings, Balls

  "The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered". Book by George Soros, 1998.

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• All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

  John Muir

  Heart, Volcanoes, Earthquakes

  John Muir, Peter Browning (1988). “John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations”, p.66, Great West Books

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• As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Country, Recovery, Past

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• Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.

  Gelett Burgess

  Love, Women, Hands

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• The shock, the power of an ordinary life. It is a thing you could not invent with banks of computers in a dust-free room.

  Don DeLillo

  Life, Dust, Ordinary

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.305, Pan Macmillan

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• The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Real, Party, Thinking

  Interview with Jamie Glazov, historynewsnetwork.org. December 23, 2003.

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• When the day of misfortune comes and (comes it must sooner or later to all )we may be prepared with Christian fortitude to endure the shock.

  Henry Kirke White

  Christian, May, Fortitude

  Henry Kirke White (1824). “The prose remains of Henry Kirke White, of Nottingham, late of St. John's College, Cambridge, containing his letters, essays, and some account of his life”, p.117

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• When I was three, my dad thought it would be hilarious to teach me swear words, then have me say them to his friends. They would laugh and laugh. I realize now the laugh was pure shock value, but it felt really good, and I've been chasing it ever since.

  Sarah Silverman

  Dad, Laughing, Would Be

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• I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him, and I'm firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind - dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on.

  John Ashbery

  Hurt, Thinking, Hair

  "John Ashbery, The Art of Poetry No. 33". Interview with Peter A. Stitt for The Paris Review, Issue 90, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 1983.

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• Every time I do anything, I have to ask myself: Is it a good role, and is it right to do it? There may be sex or nudity or violence in the script, and then you have to say: Is it gratuitous just out to shock people? Or is it there because it has to be? If a role demands it, and it isn't gratuitous, I'll do it. It's my job, after all. I'm an actress.

  Julie Andrews

  Jobs, Sex, People

  News of the World, June 1986.

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• For inspiration I look to those great players who consistently found original ways to shock their opponents. None did this better than the eighth world champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of Riga" rose to become champion in 1960 at age twenty-three and became famous for his aggressive, volatile play.

  Garry Kasparov

  Inspiration, Player, Rose

  "How Life Imitates Chess". Book by Garry Kasparov, 2007.

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• The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Vocabulary, Blind Spots, People

  Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

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• America's entire war on terror is an exercise in imperialism. This may come as a shock to Americans, who don't like to think of their country as an empire. But what else can you call America's legions of soldiers, spooks and special forces straddling the globe?

  Michael Ignatieff

  Country, War, Exercise

  Michael Ignatieff (2003). “Empire Lite”, London : Vintage

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• One does not want glory accepted as a matter of course. One wants to shock and astonish people with it.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  People, Doe, Want

  Diana Wynne Jones (2012). “Power of Three”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• Yes, I'm a homosexual and I like to shock people with glamour.

  Rufus Wainwright

  People, Glamour, Homosexual

  "Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy!". Music TV Movie, 2007.

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• If you send your work to the magazines, you may be in for a shock. You may get a rejection note. The worst kind. A printed form. And probably you will be shattered. Shattered.

  R. O. Blechman

  Rejection, Magazines, May

  R. O. Blechman (2009). “Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over your senses, but your stomach still has knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well.

  Tim Lebbon

  Over You, Skins, Sometimes

  Tim Lebbon (2003). “Fears Unnamed”

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