Surprising Quotes - Page 6

• Science has so far been unable to tell us how self-aware dogs are, much less whether they have anything like our conscious thoughts. This is not surprising, since neither scientists nor philosophers can agree about what the consciousness of humans consists of, let alone that of animals.

  John Bradshaw

  Dog, Animal, Self

  John Bradshaw (2014). “Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet”, p.182, Basic Books

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• They that go down to the sea in ships' see strange things, but what they tell is oft-times stranger still. A faculty for romancing is imparted by a seafaring life as readily and surely as a rolling gait and a weather-beaten countenance. A fine imagination is one of the gifts of the ocean-witness the surprising and unlimited power of expression and epithet possessed by the sailor. And a fine imagination will frequently manifest itself in other ways besides swear words.

  Gertrude Bacon

  Inspirational, Funny, Ocean

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• There also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Thinking, Communist Leaders, Support

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• Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the "Aha." Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in - the one that we think is reality.

  Alan Kay

  Art, Jobs, Laughter

  "Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk - and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.

  Craig Charles

  Dark, Inventory, Sometimes

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• It isn't surprising that many children consider their parents to be a little dim, and that they sometimes try to update them. The fact that they don't usually try too hard is just as well; a thoroughly updated parent is an unappetizing sight.

  Peg Bracken

  Children, Sight, Parent

  Peg Bracken (1969). “I Didn't Come Here to Argue”

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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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• 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.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Grateful, Existence

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

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• Art at its best draws attention not only to the way things are but also to the way things will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of G-D as the waters cover the sea. That remains a surprising hope, and perhaps it will be the artists who are best at conveying both the hope and the surprise.

  N. T. Wright

  Art, Sea, Water

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• Have the models been successful in predicting anything? They, of course, predict substantial global warming. This is not surprising given the expressed belief of some of the model builders in the global warming Hypothesis and the many parameters in the model that need to be introduced. However, the models also predict unambiguously that the atmosphere is warming faster than the surface of the earth; but all the available observational data unambiguously shows the opposite!

  David Douglas

  Successful, Opposites, Data

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• It should not be a surprise to find that s/m fantasy is significant in women's sex lives. Women may be born free but they are born into a system of subordination. We are not born into equality and do not have equality to eroticise. We are not born into power and do not have power to eroticise. We are born into subordination and it is in subordination that we learn our sexual and emotional responses. It would be surprising indeed if any woman reared under male supremacy was able to escape the forces constructing her into a member of an inferior slave class.

  Sheila Jeffreys

  Sex, Emotional, Class

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• They fought on with a devotion which would puzzle the generation of the 1980s. More surprising, in many instances it would have baffled the men they themselves were before Pearl Harbor. Among MacArthur's ardent infantrymen were cooks, mechanics, pilots whose planes had been shot down, seamen whose ships had been sunk, and some civilian volunteers.

  William Manchester

  Men, Volunteer, History

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• Our civilization represses not only "the instincts", not only sexuality, but any form of transcendence. Among one-dimensional men, it is not surprising that someone with an insistent experience of other dimensions, that he cannot entirely deny or forget, will run the risk either of being destroyed by the others, or of betraying what he knows.

  R. D. Laing

  Running, Men, Civilization

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• I don't intentionally make my films with the express goal of surprising the viewer.

  Bong Joon-ho

  Goal, Film, Viewers

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• I had never heard much about Nashville before coming out here, and that's why it's so surprising, because I'm the biggest enthusiast on the city of Nashville now. I'm looking for a place out here to live.

  Garrett Hedlund

  Nashville, Cities, Coming Out

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• If I'm in a relationship, I'm 1,000% in it. I love doing things for them and surprising them. And that's just something I thoroughly enjoy and it gives me a lot of pleasure. I just haven't found that right girl yet.

  Josh Henderson

  Girl, Giving, Pleasure

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• I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.

  Amy Hempel

  Mother, Accomplishment, Age

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• We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education. This, of course, is not surprising. The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.

  Aldous Huxley

  Risk, Environment, Drink

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• Love is our only reason for living and the only purpose of life. We live for the sake of love, and we live seeking love... it is not surprising that we keep looking for love. All of us are nothing but vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love.

  Swami Muktananda

  Love, Family, Spiritual

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• As the sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste, it is not surprising that an excessively bad odour should excite wretching or vomitting in some persons.

  Charles Darwin

  Smell, Scent, Taste

  Charles Darwin (1872). “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”, p.259

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• The founders of Snapchat last year turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook and a $4 billion offer from Google. It was a surprising show of integrity from the guys who invented the app that lets you look at pictures of boobs for five seconds.

  Cecily Strong

  Integrity, Technology, Years

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• I'm kind of under the radar. Not a lot of people notice me. Which is surprising, because I'm so sexy. They're probably intimidated by my sexiness and crushability.

  Will Forte

  Sexy, People, Kind

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. May 21, 2010.

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• It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.

  Guy Debord

  Children, Reading, Age

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.29, Verso

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• A father's interest in having a child--perhaps his only child--may be unmatched by any other interest in his life. It is truly surprising that the state must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it mature into a live child.

  William Rehnquist

  Mother, Children, Father

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• A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Law, Numbers

  Charles Darwin (2016). “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.63, VM eBooks

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