Unpredictable Quotes - Page 15

• To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

  Criss Jami

  Pain, Ideas, Confusion

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• If you try to impose a rigid discipline while teaching a child or a chimp you are working against the boundless curiosity and need for relaxed play that make learning possible in the first place... learning cannot be controlled; it is out of control by design. Learning emerges spontaneously, it proceeds in an individualistic and unpredictable way, and it achieves its goal in its own good time. Once triggered, learning will not stop--unless it is hijacked by conditioning.

  Roger Fouts

  Children, Teaching, Play

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• One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

  Criss Jami

  Successful, Artist, Light

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.94, Criss Jami

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• It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Events, Impossible, Guidance

  "Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Biographical". "Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980", edited by Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, www.nobelprize.org. 1993.

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• The vice named surrealism is the immoderate and impassioned use of the stupefacient image or rather of the uncontrolled provocation of the image for its own sake and for the element of unpredictable perturbation and of metamorphosis which it introduces into the domain of representation; for each image on each occasion forces you to revise the entire Universe.

  Louis Aragon

  Vices, Use, Elements

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• Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Weapons, Federal Reserve, Arsenal

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every book presents its own specific challenges, or should, and you're right that this one has a preoccupation with uncertainty. In this, Valiant Gentlemen is a rupture from previous work as its obsession is with the psychology of characters who are in states of unknowing living in unpredictable times where the stakes are unusually high.

  Sabina Murray

  Book, Character, Psychology

  Source: therumpus.net

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• History sometimes acts as madly as heredity, and her most unpredictable performances are often her most glorious.

  Rebecca West

  History, Sometimes, Heredity

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.97, Open Road Media

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• We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.

  Christopher Lasch

  Ghetto, Order, Class

  Christopher Lasch (1991). “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations”, p.67, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Cocooning: The need to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world.

  Faith Popcorn

  Home, Reality, Popcorn

  Faith Popcorn (2001). “EVEolution: Understanding Women - 8 Essential Truths That Work In Your Business & Life”, p.12, BookBaby

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• Writing a novel, in an unplanned and unpredictable way, makes you engaged; it takes you into yourself, and it becomes something between you and the character for a moment, and then you move back into the structure of the book. I love those moments, because they are completely unbidden.

  David Bezmozgis

  Book, Moving, Character

  The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 23, 2014.

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• I think that Donald Trump, how many times during the campaign did he tell us that his plan for dealing with foreign policy was to be unpredictable? Well, there we have it.

  Karen Tumulty

  Thinking, Foreign Policy, Policy

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Nothing is so unpredictable as a throw of the dice, and yet every man who plays often will at some time or other make a Venus-cast: now and then he indeed will make it twice and even thrice in succession. Are we going to be so feebleminded then as to aver that such a thing happened by the personal intervention of Venus rather than by pure luck?

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Gambling, Play

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• If Donald Trump thinks that just by being unpredictable that somehow he can have an impact, but not necessarily commit himself to certain things, that's not the way it is going to be read in foreign capitals. Foreign governments are going to take these things very literally and very directly.

  Geoff Dyer

  Thinking, Commit

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The whole country needs to get to the bottom of what really happened with the Russian collusion allegations. But in the meantime, we have a president Donald Trump who himself says trust me. He does not accept the boundaries of law. He basically says that if anybody gets too close for comfort, I'm going to get rid of them. And as long as that's in place, we cannot afford as a country to put our fate in the hands of someone so whimsical and so unpredictable.

  Laurence Tribe

  Country, Fate, Long

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another - like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.

  Michael Crichton

  Real, Encounters, Events

  Michael Crichton (1997). “Michael Crichton's Jurassic World”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Hollywood is not known as a culture of grace. Dog-eat-dog is more like it. People love you one day and hate you the next. Personal value is very much attached to box office revenues and the unpredictable and often cruel winds of fashion.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Dog, Fashion, Hate

  Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.119, David C Cook

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• An impractical man--which he not only seems to be, but really is--will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea.

  Robert Musil

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  Robert Musil (2017). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.12, Pan Macmillan

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• It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true

  Freeman Dyson

  Dream, Tasks, Prove

  Freeman Dyson (2013). “FROM EROS TO GAIA”, p.94, Pantheon

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• Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

  Philip Yancey

  Prayer, Mean, Grace

  FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Aug 03, 2012

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• Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men’s heads inside out and warp their destinies. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled.

  Frances Hardinge

  Powerful, Destiny, Men

  Frances Hardinge (2011). “Fly By Night”, p.433, Pan Macmillan

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• Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.

  Lewis Thomas

  Humanity, Threatening, Behavior

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic, and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled that they can be responsible, dependable, and content.

  Lauren Oliver

  Animal, Unhappy, Erratic

  Lauren Oliver (2015). “Delirium Trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, Requiem”, p.156, Hachette UK

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• History unfolds itself by strange and unpredictable paths. We have little control over the future; and none at all over the past.

  Winston Churchill

  Future, Past, Historical

  Sir Winston Churchill (1954). “Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait”

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• If acorns start growing into theologians, or if women begin turning into pillars of salt, then we may wish to hypothesize about a supernatural influence. But until such time as nature becomes hopelessly unintelligible and unpredictable, we need look no further than nature itself for explanations.

  George H. Smith

  Spring, Wish, Needs

  George H. Smith (2010). “Atheism: The Case Against God”, p.262, Prometheus Books

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