Quotes about surprise
page 12

“I'm aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as "Chuck Norris facts." I've seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously. Who knows, maybe these made up one-liners will prompt young people to seek out the real facts as found in my recent autobiographical book, "Against All Odds?" They may even be interested enough to check out my novels set in the Old West, "The Justice Riders," released this month. I'm very proud of these literary efforts.”

Chuck Norris (1940) American martial artist and actor

Posted on Chuck Norris' website in 2005.

People, Books, World, Justice

“The word 'campaign' is a war term. So when you go into a campaign you just prepare to go to war. If you think this is an exercise in civic activity…then you are going to be surprised.-1985”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Herrnson, Paul S., Women Running "as Women": Candidate Gender, Campaign Issues, and Voter-Targeting Strategies, The Journal of Politics, 2003, 65 no. 1]
2000s

War, Exercises, Thinking

“History is never surprising—after it happens.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Logic of Empire

Logic of Empire (p. 333)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

History

“There was never a moment during the investment of Bud Dajo when the Moros, including women, on the top of the mountain would not have fought to the death had they been given the opportunity. They had gone there to make a last stand on this, their sacred mountain, and they were determined to die fighting. Their former experience on Bud Dago did not deter them from taking this step, and it would not have deterred them from fighting to the death had an effort that their solid determination to fight it out could be broken. The fact is that they were completely surprised at the prompt and decisive action of the troops in cutting of suplies and preventing escape, and they were chagrined and disappointed in that they were not encouraged to die the death of Muhammadan fanatics.”

John J. Pershing (1860–1948) United States Army general in World War I

My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917: A Memoir, p. 451 https://books.google.com/books?id=a74_JIbehzsC&pg=PA451

Death, Women, Disappointment, Mountain

“Darwin's reply: I freely acknowledge that Mr. Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection. I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, has heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the Appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my apologies to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of his publication.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

Gardeners' Chronicle

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“I was making very aggressive provocative paintings. Whether the Rachel paintings, or the Diana paintings, I've sensed over the three or four years that I've been in getting press attention, I've sensed that it has not been that long since the woman painter was not allowed in the Royal Academy, and not allowed to paint nude men, and thee is such a huge body of work that men have made, versus the small body of work made by women, that I am not surprised to get this response.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Honigman, Ana Finel. "Stella Vine in conversation with Ana Finel Honigman" http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/07/stella_vine_in_conversation_wi.php, Saatchi Gallery (2007-07-25). On being a female artist.

Women, Men, Sense, Painting

“It is not so well known that it [Keynes's and my own move from thinking in terms of price-levels and the rate of interest to thinking in terms of inputs and outputs] is matched by a movement from Hayek to Harrod. I once asked Harrod what had put him on to the construction of his so-call 'dynamic' theory; he said, to my surprise, that it was thinking about Hayek.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Source: Money, Interest and Wages, (1982), p. 340

Thinking

“Home cooking is good for you, and I eat out less. But that's the least of it. What has surprised me is how stimulating it is. How satisfying. You learn a lot about plants and animals. You begin to recognise your place in the world.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

[Michael Pollan: Why the family meal is crucial to civilisation, Sat 25 May 2013, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/25/michael-pollan-family-meal-civilisation, 2018-05-23]

World, Home, Learning, Animals

“Most societies are ruled by mediocre people that have no vision and no imagination. Most rulers are scared of creation and creative people. Artists are funny people. All they want is to touch and move, challenge and surprise others. But dictators hate surprises more than anything else. All they want is to turn their territory into a neat little toy prison camp and play with their little toy people. Push them around, rip a leg or a head off now and then or throw them into the garbage when they are tired of their stupid, little doll faces.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Michal Szyksznian http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interviews.com/interviews/celebritarian.html, celebritarian.pl, 2009

Hate, People, Stupidity, Imagination

“If Christianity were true religious persecution would become a pious and charitable duty: if God designs to punish men for their opinions it would be an act of mercy to mankind to extinguish such opinions. By burning the bodies of those who diffuse them many souls would be saved that would otherwise be lost, and so there would be an economy of torment in the long run. It is therefore not surprising that enthusiasts should be intolerant.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", p. 178.

Men, God, Soul

“For the translator of poetry, there is no activity that brings you into a closer, more intimate contact with language, both the second language and your own language, which translation allows you to experience freshly. Of course, translation is the impossible art which is why it attracts often the best minds, at least those driven by difficulty. The best metaphor I know for translation is from my friend Eamon Grennan, who translated the poems of Leopardi. It's like walking in a clear mountain stream, looking at colorful stones in the water. You find one so gorgeous, you put it in your pocket, take it home and put it on a shelf. In the morning you are surprised that the stone looks so dull and without luster. You have the stone, but you have removed it from the water of its home language so it has lost its luster.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Art, Color, Home, Mountain

“History, as it comes into our daily lives, is charged with surprise and shock.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter I, Part 1, The Shock of Events, p. 13

History

“Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

[Scribner's Magazine, 1937, CII, 6, 19-21, I'm Not the Budget Type, Will Cuppy]

Help

“The governments principally involved, to the extent permitted by elementary prudence, should begin now and continue to make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency. We would expect that such an agency would be set up under the aegis of the United Nations. […] The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contributed fissionable and other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide special safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure. The more important responsibility of this atomic energy agency would be to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Eisenhowers proposal for the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency
1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)

World, Peace

“I am grateful for what I am & 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 1000 years, & 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 (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6&7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958), p. 444; a line within this has been most quoted since 1865 in the form "I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it."

Thinking, Sense, Parting, Wealth

“I came out stunned. I was angry at them, then. Angry at them for surprising me, touching me like that. Of course I was angry at their stupidity, their manic barbarity, their unthinking, animal obedience, their appalling cruelty; everything that the memorial evoked… but what really hit me was that these people could create something that spoke so eloquently of their own ghastly actions; that they could fashion a work so humanly redolent of their own inhumanity.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“State of the Art” (p. 94)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

People, Stupidity, Fashion, Memory

“Stop, you idiot!" I bawled at her. Her face laughed over her shoulder at me. She walked without haste to the door, her short skirt of gray flannel shaping itself to the calf of each gray wool-stockinged leg as its mate stepped forward. Sweat greased the gun in my hand. When her right foot was on the doorsill, a little chuckling sound came from her throat. "Adieu!" she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her leg. She sat down--plump! Utter surprise stretched her white face. It was too soon for pain. I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it.
"You ought to have known I'd do it!”

Dashiell Hammett book The Gutting of Couffignal

My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?"
final lines, The Gutting of Couffignal (published in Black Mask, December 1925)
Short Stories

Pain

“It isn’t surprising that Trump would be reading Jihad Watch. … What makes this striking is that Trump made no secret of reading this site, unlike numerous others who are so afraid of the politically correct thought police that they read it in secret — even back when I was giving seminars for the U. S. military on the terrorist mindset, one colonel urged me not to say that I had been there, so afraid was he of Hamas-linked CAIR. It’s long past time to stop that kind of kowtowing. Those of us who are defending human rights against jihad terror and Sharia oppression have nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of, and must not accept the enemy characterization of us, as that characterization itself is just a weapon in their arsenal and an attempt to clear away opposition to jihad and Sharia. It’s good news that the corrupt media is being passed over in favor of the truth tellers. Kudos to Trump for not bowing to the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable opinion.”

Robert Spencer Jihad Watch

After Donald Trump linked to a Jihad Watch post http://web.archive.org/web/20160803132925/https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10157422799195725 on his Facebook account. Donald Trump links to Jihad Watch story on Facebook http://web.archive.org/web/20160810201416/https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/08/donald-trump-links-to-jihad-watch-story-on-facebook (August 3, 2016), Jihad Watch.

Truth, Secret, Feeling, Time

“I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase
Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried, "Served him right! — it's not at all surprising;
The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!"”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"Early Rising"; compare: "The healthy-wealthy-wise affirm, That early birds obtain the worm — (The worm rose early too!)", Frederick Locker-Lampson.

“Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life. Noise is familiar to us. Noise has the power to bring us back to life. On the other hand, sound, foreign to life, always a musical, outside thing, an occasional element, has come to strike our ears no more than an overly familiar face does our eye. Noise, gushing confusely and irregularly out of life, is never totally revealed to us and it keeps in store innumerable surprises for our benefit. We feel certain that in selecting and coordinating all noises we will enrich men with a voluptuousness they did not suspect.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 9

Life, Men, Music, Feeling

“I was very much surprised when Mill informed me that he had not read a line of Hegel, either in the original or in translation, and regarded the entire Hegelian philosophy as sterile and empty sophistry. I mentally confronted this with the opinion of the man at the Copenhagen University who knew the history of philosophy best, my teacher, Hans Brochner, who knew, so to speak, nothing of contemporary English and French philosophy, and did not think them worth studying. I came to the conclusion that here was a task for one who understood the thinkers of the two directions, who did not mutually understand one another. I thought that in philosophy, too, I knew what I wanted, and saw a road open in front of me.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Reminiscences of my Childhood and Youth (1906), pp. 276–277

History, Understanding, Thinking, Study

“Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Faith

“I’m surprised that multiple personalities are so much less common in reality than in fiction: what a little disorder it would take, a distraction, a sleep, for one of our minor characters to imagine he was the star, to speak out for everyone else. And that’s what it would be, a change of billing, not of authorship. For you do not write your play—you are just the character in it called The Playwright. The real writer, you never meet.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#139
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Imagination, Star, Reality, Sleep

“He entered; but the mask he wore
Concealed his face from me.
Still, something I had seen before
He brought to memory. "Who art thou? What thy rank, thy name?"
I questioned, with surprise;
"Thyself" the laughing answer came,
"As seen of others' eyes."”

John B. Tabb (1845–1909) American poet

"The Stranger", in Poems (1894) http://www.archive.org/details/poemsjohntabb00tabbrich

Art, Question, Memory

“Balzac has often provided us with the tragic spectacle of an old man in love. Obliged now to obtain with gifts and favors what his personal charm won for him in his earlier days, the aged lover will ruin himself for every young woman clever enough to waken a crazy hope in his breast. Chateaubriand, who knew only too well what such suffering was like, left a terrible manuscript entitle Amour et Vieillesse; it is the long and grievous lament of a lover who does not know hot to grow old. "Those who have loved women a great deal will always love them; that is their punishment." And women who have loved many men are punished by hearing the younger among them say with genuine surprise: "I'm told she was once very beautiful."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Women, Men, Age

“When I was younger I used to go out looking for squalid brawls in the streets of Newpest. This got a couple of people stabbed, neither of them me, and led in turn to my apprenticeship in one of the Harlan’s World gangs, Newpest chapter. Later on I upgraded this kind of retreat by joining the military: brawling with a purpose, and with more extensive weaponry, but as it turned out, just as squalid. I don’t suppose I should have been as surprised as I was—the only thing the Marine Corps recruiter had really wanted to know was how many fights I had won.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 11 (pp. 136-137)

People, World, Fight

“I’m surprised to find absence of explicit anti-Semitism this time. Was a page missing?”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

In response to a constituent’s angry letter. Quoted in Slate Magazine http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/11/barney_frank_retires_why_the_democrats_will_miss_his_voice_.html, November 29, 2011.

Time

“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 book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 209.

Peace, Cars, Way, Animals

“The seven dwarfs were devastated when an eighth joined them one morning before they went to work. He went straight into their house, took little plates and cutlery out of his waistcoat, grabbed the mining tools and was the first dwarf to set off for work. Caught off-guard by his cheeky but honest manner, the others followed, angry because he was showing them the way along the path they took every day and surprised when they found he had turned into dark grotto into a glass palace with Snow White hewn in gold. For these established prospectors it was terrible to behold the intruder appropriating for himself the right to mine the virgin goldmine.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 216 (1993)

Way, Housing

“It was pretty clear to me that people were pretty, pretty hurting in this country and pretty anxious. So no, I wasn't surprised. It just — it just became [that] the volume and the noise level got much higher.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

People, Hurt, Country

““Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

Life, Death, Age, Imagination

“I have somewhere found it recorded that as Johann Gottlieb Fichte progressed with his first reading of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," he was moved to tears. To those who have labored through the tortured pages of the great German thinker this would be no matter for surprise, were it not for the quality of the tears: not those of vexation and baffled understanding, indeed, but of enthusiasm and sheer gratitude. For Fichte had fallen into the melancholy persuasion of Spinoza. At least, certain views of this austere thinker of the seventeenth century appeared to Fichte as no less gloomy in their implication than irresistible in the logic which led to them. Irresistible were the reasons which had driven Spinoza to look upon nature as governed by inexorable Fate. In the world as a whole there was no purpose, in its parts there was no freedom.”

Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (1873–1954) American philosopher

Source: Modern thinkers and present problems, (1923), p. 63: Chapter 3. A disciple of Spinoza, an illustration

Fate, World, Understanding, Nature

“Today I saw an exhibition of old Japanese paintings and sculpture [in Paris]. I was seized by the great strangeness of these things. It makes our own art seem all the more conventional to me. Our art is very meager in expressing the emotions we have inside. Old Japanese art seems to have a better solution for that... We must put more weight on the fundamentals!! When I took my eyes from these pictures and began looking at the people around me, I suddenly saw that human being are more remarkable, much more striking and surprising than they have been painted. A sudden realization like that comes only at moments.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Paris, 1898; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 197
1898

People, Art, Painting

“I’ve had several teachers who inspired me. Most notable was, perhaps, an English teacher I had during my junior year of high school. All my life I’d been praised and encouraged as an artist. This particular teacher did this, but she also encouraged me as a writer, going so far as to say once, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw your name on a book one day.””

Kevin Henkes (1960) American children's illustrator and writer

The power of these words was enormous. I’ll never forget them. Or her. Meet the Man Behind Our Favorite Mouse: An Interview with Kevin Henkes http://www.kindercare.com/content-hub/articles/2016/march/meet-the-man-behind-our-favorite-mouse-an-interview-with-kevin-henkes (March 21, 2016)

Life, Books, School, Teachers

““What do you want out of life, Francis Lostwax?”
Francis smiled. “To never hurt anybody again.” His lack of hesitation surprised him. “To feel clean.””

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 27 (p. 314)

Life, Smile, Feeling, Hurt

“"Thank God for the French army." When we read about Germany, when we watch with surprise and distress the tumultuous insurgence of ferocity and war spirit, the pitiless ill-treatment of minorities, the denial of the normal protections of civilised society to large numbers of individuals solely on the ground of race—when we see that occurring in one of the most gifted, learned, scientific and formidable nations in the world, one cannot help feeling glad that the fierce passions that are raging in Germany have not found, as yet, any other outlet but upon themselves. It seems to me that, at a moment like this, to ask France to halve her army while Germany doubles hers… to ask France to halve her air force while the German air force remains whatever it is… such a proposal, it seems to me, is likely to be considered by the French Government at present, at any rate, as somewhat unseasonable.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/mar/23/european-situation#S5CV0276P0_19330323_HOC_299 in the House of Commons (23 March 1933) shortly after Hitler became Chancellor The 1930s

God, War, World, Feeling

“The success of Watermark surprised me. I never thought of music as something commercial; it was something very personal to me… The writing of a melody is an emotional moment; success doesn't make it easy.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

You interview (2006)

Music, Success, Personality

“The war with Japan had been enacted in the game rooms at the War College by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war. We had not visualized these.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Writing the president of the US Naval War College shortly after World War II. Quoted by Donald C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/secnav/winter/SECNAV_Remarks_NWC_Current_Strategy_Forum.pdf]

War, People, Way, Game

“By turning my head slightly, I could see something out of the corner of my eye: it was a hand, the small white hand which slid along the table a little while ago. Now it was resting on its back, relaxed, soft and sensual, it had the indolent nudity of a woman sunning herself after bathing. A brown hairy object approached it, hesitant. It was a thick finger, yellowed by tobacco; inside this hand it had all the grossness of a male sex organ. It stopped for an instant, rigid, pointing at the fragile palm, then suddenly, it timidly began to stroke it. I was not surprised, I was only furious at the Self-Taught Man (L'Autodidacte); couldn't he hold himself back, the fool, didn't he realize the risk he was running?
The Self-Taught Man did not look surprised. He must have been expecting this for years. He must have imagined what would happen a hundred times, the day the Corsican would slip up behind him and a furious voice would resound suddenly in his ears. Yet he came back every evening, he feverishly pursued his reading and then, from time to time, like a thief, stroked a white hand or perhaps the leg of a small boy. It was resignation that I read on his face.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Fools, Sex, Imagination, Boy

“We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

"BuzzFlash Interviews Michael Moore" (13 March 2002)
2002

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) pages 133-134 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=156&itemID=F944&viewtype=image The last sentence of the first paragraph is often quoted in isolation to make Darwin seem heartless. The Descent of Man (1871)

Life, Men, Marriage, Health

“The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East we have been propping up and knocking down governments more or less openly for the past twenty-five years.
It is an established policy. Everybody knows it. It is supposed to be done covertly, which is only sensible if you hope to succeed since publicity in matters of this sort can only make the natives restless and defeat the project. Imagine the chauvinistic rallying around President Nixon that would have occurred if Canada, say, had announced that her agents were going to destabilize United States society so that discontented Americans could heave the Nixon Administration out of office.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Our Uncle Is Now Dorian Sam" (p.93)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Hope, Imagination, Business

“When the enemy is demoralized from within… A single blow must destroy him. Aerial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassinations from within, the murder of leading men… that is the war of the future.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), p. 10

Men, War, Future

“At the time the book of Marquis de l'Hôpital had appeared, and almost all mathematicians began to turn to the new geometry of the infinite [that is, the new infinitesimal calculus], until then little known. The surprising universality of the methods, the elegant brevity of the proofs, the neatness and speed of the most difficult solutions, a singular and unexpected novelty, all attracted the mind and there was in the mathematical world a well marked revolution [une révolution bien marquée.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

1792) as quoted by I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (1985

Books, World, Mathematics, Universe

“Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities. We may expect it to give us the most surprising information, and we cannot guess what answers it will return in a few dozen years. …They may be of a kind which will blow away the whole of our artificial structure of hypothesis.”

Sigmund Freud book Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
1920s

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“Thank you. Thank you very much. President Turner, thanks. Members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Ludden, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, and — most importantly — the Class of 2015. Thank you for your warm welcome, and I appreciate the invitation to be with you. You know, when I mentioned this speech to some pals, they were surprised I was going to give it. I haven't given a commencement address since leaving office. You know, my decision is quite practical. So I got a call from my landlord, Gerald Turner. Rather than raising the rent or threatening to withhold our security deposit. I was relieved to hear President Turner ask if I believed in free speech. I said yeah. He said, 'Perfect. Here’s your chance to give one'. As a proud member of the SMU community, I am honored to be here – truly honored – to deliver the 100th Spring Commencement address. I admire President Turner’s persuasiveness and leadership. He runs a fantastic university. It is dynamic, diverse, and destined for continued excellence. He has assembled a strong administrative team. He is supported by engaged alumni, and he has an outstanding Board of Trustees.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Spring, Communication, Support, Parent

“Hitler’s undetermined political future becomes even less surprising if we bear in mind that the intellectual origins of Fascism share central tenets with the non-Marxist Left. According to one argument, despite its eventual collision with the conservative Right once Fascism tried to come to power, early Fascism had been in its promise, rather than in its eventual application, more socialist than capitalist, more plebeian than bourgeois.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 253

Future

“The position of these ‘academics’ in Bengal has, of course, been helped by the fact that the CPI(M) has been in power there for so long. But their sway has not been confined to the teaching and ‘research’ institutions of that state. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the same ‘line’ being poured down the throats of students at the national level. And so strong is the tug of intellectual fashion, so lethal can the controlling mafia be to the career of an academic that often, even though the academic may not quite subscribe to their propositions and ‘theses’, he will end up reciting those propositions. Else his manuscript will not be accepted as a textbook by the NCERT, for instance, it will not be reviewed….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion, Strong, Help

“But, dear brother, think, further think for a moment, what joy filled our hearts, and with what surprise we must have bowed, (for who would not have bowed the knee for such a blessing?) when we received under his hand the Holy Priesthood as he said, ‘Upon you my fellow-servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer this Priesthood and this authority, which shall remain upon earth, that the Sons of Levi may yet offer an offering unto the Lord in righteousness!”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Thinking, Heart, Joy

“It's such a surprise
For Eastern eyes
To see,
That though the English are effete,
They're quite impervious to heat.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)

“[RAM1993] I laid out memory so the bottom 640 K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640 K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within—oh five or six years people were complaining.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Bill Gates Interview: Winner of the 1993 Price Waterhouse Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement, Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, https://web.archive.org/web/20080501040344/http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm, May 10, 2008, National museum of American history - Smithsonian Institution, 1993, October 8, 2014 http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm, 1990s

People, Way, Memory, Time

“It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, Finds Print of Man's Foot on the Sand.

“The founders of the CCF were called communists. And Social Credit was frequently portrayed as a dangerous mixture of monetary unorthodoxy, religious fundamentalism, and grassroots fascism. It therefore came as no surprise tha the Reform Party was labelled, particularly in the early stages, as "fringe", "extremely right wing", potentially racist, and seperatist.”

Preston Manning book The New Canada

Source: The New Canada (1992), Chapter Nine, The 1988 Federal Election, p. 158

“[…] Pao-yu was given even more freedom than before. He spent most of his time playing the willing slave to the young ladies and his favored maids. Occasionally Pervading Fragrance or Precious Virtue would remonstrate with him and advise him to give some thought to his studies and his future career, but such advice only irritated him and brought the retort that he was surprised to see in them the same worldliness that he only associated with the more vulgar sex. Black Jade, alone, never gave him occasion for such remarks.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 182

Sex, Study, Freedom, Time

“My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

Life, World

“I want a church I can stay in for years. I don't want surprises, scandals, or secrets from my church leaders.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Dog Training, Fly Fishing, And Sharing Christ In The 21st Century: Empowering Your Church To Build Community Through Shared Interests, Nelson Books, May 14, 2002, p. 9, ISBN 0785265147]

Secret

“Many people feel more complete with a cat in their life, and I would not be surprised if cats felt the same way about us. I know that if I disappeared from the lives of my five cats, they would not be as happy as before. I know, because they wait for me to go on walks along the beach, though they could perfectly well go on their own. When I am with them, they react in such a strong way, gamboling, racing ahead of me, and then flopping down in my path, that it is obvious they derive great pleasure from my company. I find it hard to believe, though, that they could possibly enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs. This is not surprising: we domesticated cats for our benefit. While they get something from it, we probably got the better deal.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 3

Life, Happiness, People, Pleasure

“A big surprise is coming toward you. How clear do you want to be about all your current commitments, when it hits?”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

19 October 2009 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/4977274727 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.”

James A. Michener book Texas

Texas (1985) First lines

“When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?”

Jamal Khashoggi (1958–2018) Saudi Arabian journalist

"Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable." in The Washington Post (18 September 2017) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/09/18/saudi-arabia-wasnt-always-this-repressive-now-its-unbearable

Fear

“Egoism and altruism are ideas we have about human nature. Historically, one has tended to arise in response to the other. In the ancient world, for example, it is generally in the times and places that one sees the emergence of money and markets that one also sees the rise of world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. If one sets aside a space and says, "Here you shall think only about acquiring material things for yourself," then it is hardly surprising that before long someone else will set aside a countervailing space and declare, in effect: "Yes, but here we must contemplate the fact that the self, and material things, are ultimately unimportant."”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Army of Altruists (2007)

Money, World, Religion, Idea

“You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: "Holy Christ, whaddya know — I'm still around!" It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Andrew Buncombe, "After 50 years in film, Cool Hand Newman plans one last hurrah," http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/news/after-50-years-in-film-cool-hand-newman-plans-one-last-hurrah-404325.html The Independent (2006-06-17)

Cars, Christ

“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build arithmetic.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

"Letter to Bertrand Russel" (1902) in J. van Heijenoort, ed., From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 (1967)

“I was not able to work in the several excursions and ascensions made in the neighborhood, where it was very beautiful. One is so surprised by these grand aspects that it would be necessary to remain a long time before finding the interpretation capable of rendering them. I am going to finish the season at Auvers. There is nothing like one's natural every-day surroundings where one really takes pleasure. The pictures we do then feel the effect of their home-life, and the sweet sensations we experience in it.”

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) French painter

Quote in Daubigny's letter to his friend Frédéric Henriet, 1872; as cited in 'Charles-francois Daubigny', by Robert J. Wichenden, in The Century Illustrated Montly Magazine, Vol. XLIV, July 1892, p. 337
1860s - 1870s

Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Feeling

“There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Il n'est pas de plaisir plus doux que de surprendre un homme en lui donnant plus qu'il n'espère. XXVIII: "La Fausse Monnaie" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose_-_XXVIII._La_Fausse_Monnaie Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Pleasure, Hope

“I'm not a career filmmaker and by that I'm not tearing down people who are, but I'm not Wes Anderson who can rent out a floor at the Chateau Marmont for a month to write my new screenplay--I have a life outside of filmmaking and after Buffalo '66, I genuinely thought I was done with making movies. But they pulled me back in. This Brown Bunny, it had something in it for me that I just had to say. I had to express it, it was in me and it ate its way out of me. I wished that it didn't, but it did and I was surprised to find myself shooting again.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

Film Freak Central Interview

Life, People, Way, Tear

“I'm surprised that I won the race to the egg. I'm not a good swimmer. If I was back in there now I'd go forget it, let them lot go first.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Moaning of Life, Karl on Kids

Forgetting

“Imagine my surprise when it turned out the main thing that I was qualified for was to get another degree and teach Political Science to other people, who would, in turn, teach it to other people! This wasn't higher education, this was Amway with a football team!”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

People, Education, Imagination, Science

“The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism, and this is really not new. People surprise to hear this. But the republican party formative event of conservativism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think "conservative". They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater. They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives: they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers, they're embarrassing to have to go to convention with them, and they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

People, Thinking, Parting

“It would be futile to deny that the Nazis built a vast mass of evil on a vast mass of prejudice. It would be equally futile to deny that strong prejudices against the Jews existed among Christians during the centuries before the Shoah. Since, moreover, the childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy, we should not be surprised that these prejudices were, in part, ecclesiastically inculcated.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Jesus, Jews and the Shoah: A Moral Reckoning by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (2003)

Strong, Evil, Parting, Childhood

“Bear your command with humility. Lead, do not condescend. Remember, these are great events and men will rise to them. Treat every man as a Soldier. He may surprise you and be one.”

Steven Pressfield book Last of the Amazons

Theseus p. 210
Last of the Amazons (2002)

Men

“As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 22)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

World, History, Thinking, Sense

“In the choice of a position, we must pay some regard to the enemy's collected force, and to our divided condition, in which the army must of necessity be cantoned. The enemy now appear to be putting their troops into winter-quarters; but it cannot be supposed they will remain inactive all winter, if we, by the manner of cantoning the army, open to them an opportunity of insulting us to advantage. The mischievous consequences of having our quarters beat up, in the dead of winter, cannot readily be foreseen. That it would be their duty and interest to lay hold of such an opportunity, nobody can deny; and that the character of the General, and many national circumstances, lead to the supposition, must be agreed to. It is necessary, therefore, to take a position which will secure us from a surprise, and have as much force together as possible, to free us from insult. The place where, and the force necessary, to these ends, are the two capital points to decide upon.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Appearance, Winter, Dead

“The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

“Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

From "Learning Japanese", published in S,M,L,XL, New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995

Beauty

““Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.”
“The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate.”
“Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the ‘natural’ process; consequently, you shouldn’t be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.””

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 4, “Enlightenment: Down on the Edgegleam Plains” (p. 83)

Nature, Chance, Time

“My attitude toward life was also my attitude toward science. Jesus said one must be born again, must become as a little child. He must let no laziness, no fear, no stubbornness keep him from his duty. If he were born again he would see life from such a plane he would have the energy not to be impeded in his duty by these various sidetrackers and inhibitions. My work, my life, must be in the spirit of a little child seeking only to know the truth and follow it. My purpose alone must be God's purpose - to increase the welfare and happiness of His people. Nature will not permit a vacuum. It will be filled with something. Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill… With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum and I became an agent. Then the passage, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," came to have real meaning. As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there. Why, then, should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

William J. Federer (2003), George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=Uyktcxy4MHkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 68.

Life, God, Happiness, People

“Rolling Stone: It's been 10 years since the Macintosh was introduced. When you look around at the technological landscape today, what's most surprising to you?
Jobs: People say sometimes, "You work in the fastest-moving industry in the world." I don't feel that way. I think I work in one of the slowest. It seems to take forever to get anything done. All of the graphical-user interface stuff that we did with the Macintosh was pioneered at Xerox PARC [the company's legendary Palo Alto Research Center] and with Doug Engelbart at SRI [a future-oriented think tank at Stanford] in the mid-'70s. And here we are, just about the mid-'90s, and it's kind of commonplace now. But it's about a 10-to-20-year lag. That's a long time.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

People, World, Way, Feeling

“They went by daily marches through the hills, from stage to stage, and when they arrived at their destination at early dawn they surrounded Kambayat and the idolaters were awakened from their sleepy state of carelessness and were taken by surprise, not knowing where to go, and mothers forgot their children and dropped them from their embrace. The Muhammadan forces began to 'kill and slaughter on the right and on the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islam,' and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of brilliant precious stones, such as pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, etc. as well as a great variety of cloths, both silk and cotton, stamped, embroidered, and coloured.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 43 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Children, Clothes

“While most people… were seeking to modify the principles of either relativity or quantum theory, we surprised ourselves (and many other people) by succeeding in putting them together without modifying their principles.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

People

“Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn’t have a few pounds left.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

A soldier in Argos, speaking of the dead King Agamemnon, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“For a rational actor, the information he uses to shape his beliefs is a variable rather than a given. Before deciding how to act, he has to make a preliminary decision concerning the quantity of resources he is prepared to invest in looking for the relevant facts. A general must not attack before he has surveyed the terrain, or a surgeon operate before he has examined the patient. However, they must not delay too long, for then they may be surprised by the enemy’s attack or flight, or by the patient’s death.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

Death, Decision

“Since the conception of human rights transcends local legislation and the citizenship of the person affected, it is not surprising that support for human rights can also come from anyone—whether or not she is a citizen of the same country as the person whose rights are threatened. A foreigner does not need the permission of a repressive government to try to help a person whose liberties are being violated. Indeed, in so far as human rights are seen as rights that any person has as a human being and not as a citizen of any particular country, the reach of the corresponding duties can also include any human being, irrespective of citizenship.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Amartya Sen, "Human Rights and Asian Values" Sixteenth Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture on Ethics and Foreign Policy, May 25, 1997; Republished in: Tibor R. Machan (2013), Business Ethics in the Global Market. p. 69
1990s

Support, Help, Personality, Country

“The second superstring revolution (1994-??) has brought non-perturbative string physics within reach. The key discoveries were the recognition of amazing and surprising "dualities." They have taught us that what we viewed previously as five theories is in fact five different perturbative expansions of a single underlying theory about five different points! It is now clear that there is a unique theory, though it may allow many different vacua…. Three different kinds of dualities, called S, T, and U have been identified."”

John Henry Schwarz (1941) American theoretical physicist

pp. 4–5

“Surprising news from New York, the whistle-blower had his whistle blown!”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

citation needed
Weekend Update samples

“At first, I thought I had found in this second figure [a bronze Orpheus, Zadkine made shortly after his return from New York to Paris, in 1944] the perfect solution, but a surprise awaited me. One day my coal merchant delivered to me, here in my studio, some wood for heating; among these logs I found a rudimentary but completely mysterious wooden figure of a man. He seemed to be walking in great strides, his torso suggested by only two simple boards which, in their structure, were very much like an ancient lyre. I immediately began working on a new 'Orpheus', in which the [music-]instrument had truly become part of the man.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 154-155

Music, Parting, Perfection

“Mathematicians are there to find the constraints and to eliminate those things that aren't constraints… I know this will surprise many of you, but they are useful!”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Mathematicians are useful (1971), p. 1

“I did encounter much opposition and sheer disregard, and this was against my expectation. I was surprised that people thought that this was not a legitimate avenue to explore. Many times I heard people say that it is too early to start considering such heretical ideas. Why? I wondered. I thought it was legitimate to consider anything.”

Mordehai Milgrom (1946) Israeli physicist

"Dark Matter Heretic," 2003

People, Idea, Time

“My reaction to “creative capitalism” as lauded by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Kinsley, and (somewhat to my surprise), Professor Glaeser of the Harvard Economics Department is a skeptical one. The embrace of massive corporate charity, the criticism of capitalism by its greatest beneficiaries, and the frequent resort by the advocates of “creative capitalism” to platitudes (such as: “the world is getting better, but not fast enough and not for everyone”; “today’s miracles of technology only benefit those who can afford them”; “economic demand is not the same as economic need”), along with the vagueness of the term itself, leave me with an uncomfortable feeling.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

" Against Creative Capitalism https://web.archive.org/web/20080813084622/http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com:80/creative_capitalism/2008/06/against-creativ.html" (2008), published in Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.

World, Feeling

“I have noticed in observing and debating him [Moore] that he is an addict of crowd-pleasing and demagogy, and also an addict of "secret financial government" rhetoric. He also affects a certain plebeian and blue-collar style. When he thinks it will work, he will pretend to believe that "American jobs" are migrating to Mexico, or that "American boys" are being duped into war by hidden cabals. This combination of nativism and populism (stirred in with a nauseating dose of sentimentality and an absolutely breath-taking contempt for objective truth) reminds me very much of the dolts who joined the SA. But then, those guys were probably as surprised as their dumb Stalinist counterparts when the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed. By the way, that was the only treaty he signed that Stalin didn't break. With much of the remaining Left, I have to say, there is a certain immunity from Moore's gruesome posturing, if only because they don't think it was a good idea to have General Motors, or the city of Flint, Michigan, in the first place. And some of them are genuine pacifists, while Moore is an open supporter of the Islamist death-squads in Iraq.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29): On Michael Moore 2000s, 2004

Death, War, Truth, Secret

“We have discovered that what a year ago seemed to be a neglected house is essentially a ruin.
This is not a pleasant fact, and it is not surprising that all of us are rather annoyed and disappointed about it.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Disappointment, Housing

“Alas, producers of commercial dinosaur products continue to churn out low quality product that is either obsolete or improperly derivative. Dino documentaries and books have become so plentiful that they are no longer special and I do not try to keep up with them. There are also serious problems with quality and accuracy which often fail to meet the expectations of scientists. More about those problems here. I about kicked in the TV screen when one dino doc claimed that the brain of Tyrannosaurus was as large as that of a gorilla when its IQ was not all that much better than a croc’s. And why are the theropods shown pausing to challenge their prey before they charge, when the actual focus of predators is to hit and overwhelm the victim before it knows what is happening? The low standards are not surprising considering how the media and press frequently carry product that promotes belief in the paranormal. But these are quibbles. Dinosaur science has almost completely transformed over the half century that my neural network has been aware of it. The old stand-bys from Allosaurus to the always strange Stegosaurus are still fascinating, but we now know about armored sauropods, fat-bellied therizinosaurs and multi-winged, near avian, sickle claws. The reptile model is out and the avian-mammalian is dominant.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Autobiography, part V http://gspauldino.com/part5.html, gspauldino.com

Books, Problem, Science

“"Lord Arthur, may I present Lady Wednesday's Dawn?"
Arthur bowed. He had already half-guessed the identity of their surprise guest. She had the hauteur that all the chief servants of the Trustees possessed. A kind of look that said, I am superior and you had better admit it.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Drowned Wednesday (2005), p. 167.

“Check this joke out: If you wanna talk to me after the show I'll be… Fuckin'… Surprised. I'm gonna have to have some liner notes for that joke, like "During that joke, he points to the back." So people get the full experience. I'm gonna do a bunch of jokes that require actually seeing me. Then the CD will piss people off.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

People

“The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;
The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;
He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,
In the glad surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Toiling of Felix, Pt. III, st. 1 (1898).

“It cannot be surprising that, as resistance within Cuba grows, refugees have been using whatever means are available to return and support their countrymen in the continuing struggle for freedom. Where people are denied the right of choice, recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Message to Chairman Khrushchev Concerning the Meaning of Events in Cuba (18 April 1961) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8070 1961

People, Support, Freedom

“I was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens [in February 1912, during a group exhibition of Futurist painters in Paris] when, as I passed in front of a newspaper stand, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing on the front page of the Journal the reproduction of my picture 'The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

Source: 1940's, La mia Vita (1945), Carlo Carrà; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger (2008), p. 29 - In his quote Carrà is refering to his painting 'The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli', he painted ca 1910/11

“All I knew of Israel growing up was that they’ve been the hot-bed of militant violence forever. Abraham’s god of infinite love, forgiveness, and mercy spawned three major faiths, all of whom have been at war with each other, each since their inception, and it seems that God’s spyglass of magnified torment was usually focused right there. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Old Testament and noticed the patterns therein. If YHWH promised a holy land to his chosen people, they should expect more damnation than paradise. That would be consistent with the Bible’s blood-stained stories, and that’s the way we’ve always seen it on the news in my country. There would be less milk and honey, and more uprisings and explosions, especially when it means mixing or displacing so many fundamentally polarized religious and cultural groups. If I have not been completely mislead by the media, then maybe that’s why there are so many atheists in that area now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"on the Israeli atheist convention" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/01/13/on-the-israeli-atheist-convention/, Patheos (January 13, 2013) Patheos

Love, God, War, People

“Two keen eyes had watched every move of the party from the foliage of a nearby tree. Tarzan had seen the surprise caused by his notice, and while he could understand nothing of the spoken language of these strange people their gestures and facial expressions told him much.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

People, Understanding, Tree

Quotes about surprise page 12

Quotes about surprise
page 12