Surprising Quotes - Page 6

• To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.

  George Orwell

  Military, War, Fighting

  George Orwell (1998). “Two wasted years, 1943”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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• If biologists so often forget the most universal of all biologic principles [variation], it is not surprising that men and women in general expect their fellows to think and behave according to the pattern that may fit the law-maker, or the imaginary ideals for which the legislation was fashioned, but which are ill-shaped for all real individuals who try to live under them.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Real, Men, Thinking

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• What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.

  Clay Shirky

  Technology, Thinking, Data

  "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags". shirky.com. Spring, 2005.

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• The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Wise, Simple

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• Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.

  Lewis Thomas

  Learning, Science, Realization

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• A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Moving, Mean

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• Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

  George Orwell

  Fear, Effectiveness, Challenges

  George Orwell (1987). “Animal farm: a fairy story”, Harvill Secker

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• Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

  Michel Foucault

  School, Prison, Factories

  Michael Kelly, Michel Foucault (1994). “Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate”, p.176, MIT Press

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• I love a novel that’s funny, and The Taxman Cometh is very funny, delightfully well-written, yet with a serious message about how government bureaucracy affects us all. Read. Enjoy. And if a comparison to Catch 22 pops into your mind, that’s not surprising.

  Marvin Kalb

  Government, Mind, Messages

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• He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

  Amy Tan

  Morning, Stars, Sunset

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• She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free.

  Rob Sheffield

  Beautiful, Strong, College

  Rob Sheffield (2007). “Love Is a Mix Tape: Life, Loss, and What I Listened To”, p.67, Crown Archetype

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• Elena?" "Yes, unless Nick found a woman in the forest, which I suppose wouldn't be too surprising.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Forests, Found

  Kelley Armstrong (2009). “Frostbitten”, p.290, Random House Canada

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• The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities.

  Victor Hugo

  Sex, Simple, Men

  Victor Hugo (2015). “Les Misérables”, p.1167, Booklassic

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• I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of! my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Running, Sweet

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.373, Penguin

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• Follow the rules whenever possible. That makes it a lot more surprising when you break them.

  Mira Grant

  Break

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• Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Country, Yield, People

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• Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Determination, Skills, Mind

  Stephen R. Donaldson (1982). “The One Tree”, Del Rey

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• In conflict, straightforward actions generally lead to engagement, surprising actions generally lead to victory.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Victory, Engagement

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  Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Passion, Eye

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.406, Simon and Schuster

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• It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreement about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values.

  Freeman Dyson

  Experts, Facts, Honest

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• It is not surprising that liberals believed in progress. The idea of progress justified the entire transition from feudalism to capitalism. It legitimated the breaking of the remaining opposition to the commodification of everything, and it tended to wipe away all the negatives of capitalism on the grounds that the benefits outweighed, by far, the harm.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Ideas, Progress, Transition

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.97, Verso

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• What is surprising is that their ideological opponents, the Marxists - the anti-liberals, the representatives of the oppressed working classes - believed in progress with at least as much passion as the liberals.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Passion, Class, Progress

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.97, Verso

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• The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

  Robert Henri

  Real, Artist, Surprise

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• What is both surprising and delightful is that the spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game...There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Baseball, Mother, Games

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• Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

  Seamus Heaney

  Wise, Needs, Variation

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.420, Macmillan

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