Surprising Quotes - Page 24

• It's still a compliment when you're backed by younger and older, but it's actually unexpected. It's surprising, but for me it's in fact the most beautiful compliment.

  Stromae

  Beautiful, Facts, Unexpected

  Source: www.ebony.com

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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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• 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 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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• 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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• It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.

  John Piper

  Prayer, Trying, Comfort

  John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.65, Baker Academic

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• What scientists are attached to is journeys into the unknown and discovering things that are completely unexpected and baffling and surprising.

  Brian Cox

  Journey, Unexpected, Scientist

  BBC Radio4 "Big Bang Week" Interview, September 2008.

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• I don't want to convince you that mathematics is useful. It is, but utility is not the only criterion for value to humanity. Above all, I want to convince you that mathematics is beautiful, surprising, enjoyable, and interesting. In fact, mathematics is the closest that we humans get to true magic. How else to describe the patterns in our heads that - by some mysterious agency - capture patterns of the universe around us? Mathematics connects ideas that otherwise seem totally unrelated, revealing deep similarities that subsequently show up in nature.

  Ian Stewart

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society.

  John Adams

  School, Knowledge, Feet

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.9

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• Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena.

  Herbert Simon

  Innovation, Surprise, Unusual

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• The whole experience of 'Eastbound' has been completely unexpected and super-surprising every step of the way.

  Danny McBride

  Way, Steps, Unexpected

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

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• Suppose one who had always continued blind be told by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a wall; must not this to him seem very admirable and surprising? He cannot conceive how it is possible for mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would seem as strange and unaccountable as prophesy doth to others. Even they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though familiarity make it less observed) find therein sufficient cause of admiration.

  David Berman

  Wall, Blessed, Knowledge

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• A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

  Adam Johnson

  Stories, Inevitable, Familiar

  "The Call For Collaboration" by Adam Johnson, therumpus.net. March 3, 2009.

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• In our truly remarkable an unexampled civil peace, where there are rarely fist fights; where no one is born, is gravely ill, or dies; where meat is eaten but no one sees an animal slaughtered; where scores of millions of cars, trains, elevators, and airplanes go their scheduled way and there is rarely a crash; where an immense production proceeds in orderly efficiency and the shelves are duly clears and nevertheless none of this come to joy or tragic grief or any other final good it is not surprising if there are explosions.

  Paul Goodman

  Grief, Airplane, Fighting

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.188, New York Review of Books

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• I think that simply nudging yourself into unfamiliar settings - physical or emotional - can produce surprising results on the writing front.

  Ralph Keyes

  Writing, Emotional, Thinking

  Source: writerunboxed.com

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• Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the cliché of Latino machismo, but the Mediterranean male character is more dull than the female character. Women are more surprising and they have fewer prejudices.

  Pedro Almodovar

  Character, Males, Female

  Interview with Maria Delgado, www.theguardian.com. August 4, 2006.

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• People often find it surprising that actors find photo shoots difficult, because you're very concerned about what's going on externally in those things when you have to be concerned with what's going on internally as an actor.

  Max Irons

  People, Actors, Difficult

  Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I'm a creature of routine, and I hate feeling incompetent, so I avoided novelty and challenge. Making an effort to push myself in that way has brought me surprising boost.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Hate, Effort, Challenges

  "Slate Discussion: The Happiness Project". Online Chat, www.washingtonpost.com. January 15, 2009.

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• I mean look at Antichrist. He's not making films to be liked by everyone, so why is this so surprising coming from Lars von Trier?

  Kirsten Dunst

  Mean, Looks, Film

  Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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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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• I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.

  William Monahan

  Thinking, People

  Source: collider.com

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• I think her Grandmother Hall gave her a great sense of family love, and reassurance. Her grandmother did love her, like her father, unconditionally. And despite the order and the discipline - and home at certain hours and out at certain hours and reading at certain hours - there was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn't censored.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Father, Book, Reading

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.

  Christine Jennings

  Ideas, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The editor needs to put his own life on hold for the better of the magazine, the crew, and the readers. And to have a bigger vision of the magazine's style and an understanding that every [issue] should be well-balanced and hopefully surprising. To have a pink wall with a door of perception where he can bang his head on.

  Toni Jerrman

  Wall, Issues, Doors

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• New York is vibrant, sexy, naughty, always surprising, and has great live music and great fashion.

  David Harewood

  Sexy, Fashion, New York

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