Surprising Quotes - Page 13

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• If we offer a prize, so to speak, to anyone who manages to bring a country under his physical control - namely, that they can then sell the country's resources and borrow in its name - then it's not surprising that generals or guerrilla movements will want to compete for this prize. But that the prize is there is really not the fault of the insiders. It is the fault of the dominant states and of the system of international law they maintain.

  Thomas Pogge

  Country, Law, Names

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• It is indeed a surprising and fortunate fact that nature can be expressed by relatively low-order mathematical functions.

  Rudolf Carnap

  Order, Facts, Lows

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• I love Hank Williams. Who doesn't love Hank Williams? So my choices are not that surprising.

  George Thorogood

  Choices, Hank Williams

  Source: lynnhappens.com

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, Reality, Thinking

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Continental Divides". Interview with Joseph Klarl, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2013.

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• People are much more likely to act on their self-percepts of efficacy inferred from many sources of information rather than rely primarily on visceral cues. This is not surprising because self knowledge based on information about one's coping skills, past accomplishments, and social comparison is considerably more indicative of capability than the indefinite stirrings of the viscera

  Albert Bandura

  Past, Self, Skills

  Albert Bandura (1986). “Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory”, Prentice Hall

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• Molecular genetics can show off some surprising relationships like, for example, the close relationship of whales to hippopotamuses, which I think nobody ever guessed until molecular data was looked at. The closest relatives of whales are hippopotamuses, even closer than any other cloven-hoofed animals.

  Richard Dawkins

  Animal, Thinking, Whales

  Source: www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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• I write my books to challenge my own feelings and theories. Perhaps most surprising was what I learned about rice farming. It was really interesting to think of how different Asian and Western cultures are as a result of the kinds of agricultural practices that our ancestors used for thousands of years. The life of a Chinese peasant in the Middle Ages was so dramatically different from the life of a European peasant - night and day different.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Book, Writing, Night

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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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• 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 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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• 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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• What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of good government, of the economy particularly. And this has hit education badly. The news you get from the universities in Nigeria is often appalling. I don't think a lot of it gets out. There is the obsession with cults and all kinds of dreadful things going on and all this is taking its toll and it is not surprising that quality of students and graduates who come out is not good. It will not be surprising if this shows in the quality of work they do.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Government, Talking

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• I think it's the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page

  John Updike

  Book, Thinking, Interesting

  John Updike, James Plath (1994). “Conversations with John Updike”, p.210, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Herbert Simon

  Innovation, Surprise, Unusual

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• There is no evolutionary pressure to create minds capable of forming sciences; it just happened. Evolutionary pressure has not led to higher rates of reproduction for people capable of solving scientific problems or creating new scientific ideas. So if, in fact, the science-forming capacities evolved for other reasons, it would not be too surprising if those particular structures that have developed proved to be rather special in their nature, reflecting the contingencies of their evolution or the working of physical law.

  Noam Chomsky

  Law, Ideas, Creating

  Source: chomsky.info

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