Surprising Quotations

Beyond any question, the way the American founders consistently linked faith and freedom, republicanism and religion, was not only deliberate and thoughtful, it was also surprising and anything but routine.

It's actually very surprising how little we think about the quality of our decision-making and how we could improve it. How absent decision-making classes are from educational curricula. How little we think about how it is we think.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

I like a show to unfold and keep presenting itself, surprising you.

My writing has a lot of surprising twists,

What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a word's setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that word's full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise.

There has never been a better raconteur than Jesus of Nazareth.

When one begins, as I did, to analyze men after a fairly long experience of analyzing women, one receives a most surprising impression of the intensity of this envy of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, as well as of breasts and of the act of suckling.

As an actor, the thing I want to do to an audience is always be ahead of them and always be surprising in the work without deviating from the writer's intention.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well.

My company is known for being funny as well as moving. You get a bit of everything in these shows. I think people know they're going to have a surprising experience.

When I wrote 'Silver Linings,' I thought I was writing a book about the Philadelphia Eagles and male bonding, but when the book came out, it was surprising to me that the mental health community embraced it.

Considering the company I keep in this place, that is hardly surprising.

The most surprising thing, honestly, is that so few Americans know about the orphan trains. I was also surprised at the resilience and fortitude of the riders I met, their pragmatism and grace. I don't know whether this is a Midwestern trait or simply a human one.

Drama and comedy, to me ,are all about being surprising, coherent, and true, all at once.

Every word we speak calls on 37 muscles and thousands of nerves. It's not surprising that sometimes these nerves and muscles fail us.

If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

If you swap it about, do television, theatre, film, you can go on surprising yourself. The problem is you get employed to do something you've already done. They want something from that sheep pen of performances they've seen you do.

Feeling pummeled by the outside pounding of tests and standards, a teacher can easily hide and simply turn to the immediacy of the classroom. It is not surprising that many teachers burrow in their rooms with all that they know about their students. There is no place to take the information.

One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another's eyes as a function of our relative social position.

The deployment of geolocating tags attached to ordinary garbage could paint a surprising picture of the waste management system, as trash is shipped throughout the country in a maze-like disposal process - as we saw in Seattle with our own Trash Track project.

I'm a great admirer of 'The Simpsons.' It's very surprising because it's backed by a right-wing television company in the U.S., and quite often it's poking fun at the people who would be its audience.

I think the most surprising thing about giving is it takes a while to find out what you're really interested in and what you really want to do.

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

Everything that has happened to me has been amazing and surprising.

I like to do things that are surprising and different.

It's weirder and more surprising than the other books. I think there are more places where it's just more reality bending, deliberately so. I think it's a lot more emotionally raw.

I have had close relationships with three species of wild pigs, each a chance encounter on a different continent, and all continue to enrich my life in surprising ways.

I can tell you one of the most surprising ingredients I've ever found. Perhaps five years ago on a beach I saw this herb that looked exactly like chives. I put it in my mouth and started chewing and, surprise, it tasted exactly like coriander.

Writers usually don't get to pick our own covers. I know it's surprising to hear that.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

I want to constantly be surprising people with different roles.

I don't want to make it a hard, fast rule, but it's surprising how many 'fun for the whole family' acts are real scumbags. The people that confess they're scumbags on stage are generally really great people. They're more honest with the audience with who they are.

The tension I feel is the moment they say, 'Action!' Movies are like lightning in a bottle, and you always want to find when you possibly can catch a surprising moment.

We have already discovered how quickly we become dependent on the Internet and its applications for business, government and research, so it is not surprising that we are finding that we can apply this technology to enable or facilitate our social interactions as well.

But since day one, we've always been kinda up against it. So at the end, it's not surprising that we were kind of led along for so many months and didn't know what the fate of the show was gonna be. It was... in a weird way, just kind of that was the way it's always been.

A surprising number of American skyjackers were not yet old enough to drink or sometimes even drive. These adolescents were generally inept at planning their crimes, and few of their capers met with any success; most seemed to end within moments of starting, usually after a fatherly pilot convinced the nervous teen to hand over his gun.

It's absolutely surprising to me how well 'The State' has held up as far as people liking it and having fond memories of it, considering it's a sketch show.

On 'EastEnders,' if someone gets surprising news on the phone, the scene ends with them looking at their handset in amazement. No one in real life does that.

When we hear the word 'beauty', we inevitably think that beauty belongs in a special elite realm where only the extraordinary dwells. Yet without realizing it, each day each one of us is visited by beauty. When you actually listen to people, it is surprising how often beauty is mentioned. A world without beauty would be unbearable.

Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history - as befits a former law professor - and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.

Surprising as it may seem, this study indicates that similar conditions are best for all sorts of races.

One thing George R. R. Martin does is surprising things to main characters. But he says so himself.

I feel like my whole life, I've had to prove myself to so many people because I'm young and because I'm a female; it's just constant. I'm always surprising people.

Being a woman in control of a company - even a small private company, as ours was then - was so singular and surprising in those days that I necessarily stood out. In 1963, and for the first several years of my working life, my situation was certainly unique.

Most of us know nothing about constitutional law, so it's hardly surprising that we take sides in the Obamacare debate the way we root for the Red Sox or the Yankees. Loyalty to the team is what matters.

When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory.

Somebody out there is going to do something that's far more surprising than anything that I would do. I was surprised by the whole web thing in the first place.

Being a typical Briton, I love my home comforts and always try and find an English pub where I can tuck into some traditional English food, accompanied by a nice pint. Fortunately, I haven't been ill with food poisoning or anything like that, which is quite surprising considering how many different types of food I eat when I'm travelling.

Every country has its own perspective on the Second World War. This is not surprising when experiences and memories are so different.

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.

I've been criticized because I've had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don't find anything surprising about that.

Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.

The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.

This may sound surprising for someone who works in Hollywood, but I do not count calories, and I don't even care about weight gain, which I know sounds really bizarre. I listen to my body. I don't just wake up in the morning and cook whatever I eat.

The thing that's been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is - I think then, and I think now - that if we didn't do this, someone else would have done it.

Pops is playing like the monster he is. Nothing he's doing out there is surprising us because we see it every day.

On the one hand you've got electoral uncertainty in Germany, and on the other you're going to get a raise in (U.S.) rates tomorrow. It would be surprising if the dollar didn't strengthen today.

I was shocked. I won't say it was crushing, but it was surprising and disappointing.

I wouldn't have done this show without Nathan Lane, because he's God's gift to Broadway, ... And Matthew's a surprising find -- I didn't know he could sing and dance.

When I brought 'Sex and the City' to HBO, I wanted to do something independent, where I could be like, 'I don't care if anybody watches this thing. Just let me do something that I would love to see.' Honestly, the success of 'Sex and the City' was what was most surprising to me. It was sort of like the anti-TV-show in my mind.

My honest opinion is he can play at the higher level, and it's been surprising to me that he hasn't had more looks than he did. It's unfortunate, I think. He's a qualifier (academically). He's big enough. He's certainly strong enough, and I honestly think he proved himself.

Of all the great shooters there have been, to think that I would still be third after 12 years, that's pretty surprising. But, I don't think it's any more surprising than the fact that the Nos. 1, 2 and 4 players on the 3-point list would all be from the same area.

One thing that's surprising is how serious this is. It's now my career.

One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.

Money should flow into Japanese government bonds, including from foreign investors. It wouldn't be surprising for the recent rise in yen interest rates, which had been ignored by the market until now, to garner attention.

No one knows what to expect, and we all may be in for some surprising results in state finals this year.

Of course it's going to be surprising to me; I'm a starter and I feel I should be a starter.

Nothing about what they said today is surprising -- they changed the minimum number of words (from their last statement). We're still waiting for confirmation (of a recovery in) the labor market.

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with which the many are governed by the few

(Neil) is a returning starter who has a lot of speed, covers a lot of ground in the outfield, and has a surprising strong bat. He's deceiving. He's one of the fastest that we have on this team.

Negotiation seems like dancing the Tango, two steps forward, two steps back and suddenly three surprising steps forward,

People were fairly attuned to Greenspan this morning, but I don't think anything he said had an impact one way or the other, and the tape almost stopped when Bush was speaking -- there was nothing surprising there. It's fairly quiet. I think we're suffering post-9/11 anniversary boredom.

Obviously, the results of this research show that there is a need for education. Given this information, it's not surprising that Health Canada estimates that there are 2 million cases of foodborne illness each year and proper food handling could reduce the risk of illness.

New hires and recalls from layoffs... are far below what historical experience indicates, ... To a surprising degree, firms seem to be able to continue identifying and implementing new efficiencies in their production processes and thus have found it possible so far to meet increasing orders without stepping up hiring.

New services reflect the changing demographics of bank customers and banks' are adopting new strategies for retaining core deposits. The first baby boomers will turn 65 in 2011, and by 2030, one in five Americans is expected to be 65 or older. Add the trend toward increased equity ownership, and it's hardly surprising that more than half of the bankers expect to offer brokerage services (61%) and half will offer mutual funds (50%) in the next three years.

Right before I did it, everything went silent and the next thing I know I'm just watching the ball go through the air. It was probably one of the greatest feelings I've ever had playing football. I don't think it really hit me that I made it until I got inside (the locker room). It's still surprising to me.

Returns have been good and I don't find that surprising at all. The herd thundered out and left in its wake a very cheap market and now people are pausing and looking back.

My first personal reaction is that it's maybe not surprising since Mars gets beaten up a lot by impacts.

I don't have to pinch myself. I knew it was a good team from the beginning. It's just surprising to all of y'all.

Lots of things can also happen between now and then (November 5th), not least among them injuries. I have had problems with my hand and back on and off over the years, which is hardly surprising when you have been fighting since the age of nine like I have. My left hand swells up after almost every fight.

My journey took a surprising turn in 1992. I left Boston and who would have ever thought I would wind up with the New York Yankees?

Luxury Auto sites seemed to have mastered the delivery of complex Web pages with a strong visual component to broadband users. However, it is quite surprising that a number of leading luxury automakers are having significant site downtime. Luxury auto buyers become easily frustrated with such poor site performance, and can quickly turn to a competitor site to continue their browsing and purchase consideration process.

Sentiment towards the precious metals complex remains overwhelmingly bullish, which is hardly surprising given the strength of the price action.

The price strength has been a little surprising given the magnitude of the surplus in U.S. corn inventories. However, over the past 32 years, the central Illinois cash price has never established a marketing year high in February, suggesting that even higher prices might be expected sometime over the next six months.

The only mystery is why we find it surprising that someone opted out, ... It makes him different.

What I do find surprising is that other people do not think in the same way. I find it hard to imagine a world where numbers and words are not how I experience them!

I wouldn't say disappointing. I think surprising is the right word. And that includes sales to the general public, not just the waiting list members.

Kmart is in a condition of repair right now, ... It is almost surprising they are down only 2 percent. They have a huge amount of over-age inventory they have to unload.

I'd call it flat. This comes after pretty steady growth after 2000. So it's probably not surprising that we've leveled off a bit.

Given some of the strong data we've seen lately, it's not surprising he's bullish on the economy. There's not a lot of new news in this.

Given that the Internet is a great one-to-one marketing tool for consumers, it's not surprising that -- if non-profits do their jobs well -- people are happy to donate online.

Given the media's focus on Katrina's destruction and on government's poor performance in the hurricane's aftermath, it's not surprising that confidence would fall. But, with aid now flowing and fatalities fewer than expected, that could reverse.

Given England's injury ravaged squad it is not surprising that it is one way traffic in the betting. To put it bluntly - you don't need a calculator to add up the cash we've taken for England.