Unusual Quotes - page 7
Of the range of images in Upper Paleolithic art, the most arresting are the therianthropes. There are not many... but they seize the imagination. The most famous is the so-called sorcerer... In a manner unusual for Upper Paleolithic images, the sorcerer is staring directly out of the wall, a full-face stare that transfixes the spectator.
Richard Leakey
The world has recently been treated for nearly a decade to the unusual spectacle of a great empire deliberately taking every possible step to secure its own destruction, because its citizens were so obsessed by prejudice, or incapable of thinking for themselves, as never to perform the few logical steps necessary for proving that they would shortly be involved in a guerre à outrance, which could be neither averted nor escaped.
Enoch Powell
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded. They divide their time between labour designed to postpone the moment of dissolution for themselves and frantic struggles to hasten it for others of their kind.
Bertrand Russell
Manfred decides that he's going to do something unusual for a change: He's going to make himself temporarily rich. This is a change because Manfred's normal profession is making other people rich. Manfred doesn't believe in scarcity or zero-sum games or competition-his world is too fast and information-dense to accommodate primate hierarchy games.
Charles Stross
It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.
Ulysses S. Grant
The attention that literary artists have lavished on Spinoza is remarkable. Writers have not only shaped their aesthetics by reflection on Spinoza, have not only inserted his views into the inner lives and dialogues of their characters, but have molded the man himself into a protagonist in their novels, poems, and plays. This last aspect of the literary fascination with Spinoza is particularly noteworthy. The person of Benedictus Spinoza has drawn, over the centuries, unusual attention, and not only from literary writers.
Baruch Spinoza
I do not have the professional knowledge to write a scholarly article about Spinoza. But what I think about this man I can express in a few words. Spinoza was the first to apply with strict consistency the idea of an all-pervasive determinism to human thought, feeling, and action. In my opinion, his point of view has not gained general acceptance by all those striving for clarity and logical rigor only because it requires not only consistency of thought, but also unusual integrity, magnamity, and - modesty.
Baruch Spinoza
It's not unusual for us to receive an email from somebody saying, "I spend all of my time on your website and now I have less of a social life than I had before.” We would much rather have people meet people through the website and go out and party than stay at home on a Friday night reading other people's profiles. And it's surprising, but we have actually received far less complaints about stalking than we otherwise would have expected.
Mark Zuckerberg
You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
Václav Havel
If the resistances in one direction are impossible to overcome, then the artist's invention and powers of expression turn to a goal the way to which is not obstructed, and it is very unusual for him even to be aware of the fact that his achievement is a substitute for the real thing. Even in the most liberal democracy the artist does not move with perfect freedom and unrestraint; even there he is restricted by innumerable considerations foreign to his art. The different measure of freedom may be of the greatest importance for him personally but in principle there is no difference between the dictates of a despot and the conventions of even the most liberal social order. If force in itself were contrary to the spirit of art, perfect works of art could arise only in a state of complete anarchy. But in reality the presuppositions on which the aesthetic quality of a work depends lie beyond the alternative presented by political freedom and compulsion.
Arnold Hauser
What Phædrus thought and said is significant. But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane. There seems little doubt that he was insane, but much of his writing at the time indicates that what was driving him insane was this hostile opinion of him. Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached. In Phædrus' case there was a court-ordered police arrest and permanent removal from society.
Robert M. Pirsig
There is no doubt that Goya thought that one of the drugs chiefly responsible for the sleep of reason was the Church, and he had the lowest possible opinion of ecclesiastical institutions. However, this did not prevent him from painting religious pictures, completely sincerely because, like all Latin people, however little he believed in Christianity, he felt himself to be within the structure of the Catholic Church. One of his finest works was the decoration of a church near Madrid called S. Antonio de la Florida. He used the kind of device that would have appealed to Tiepolo. He painted a balcony round the drum of a cupola, and behind it he put a crowd of loiterers who are supposed to be watching the saint raise a man from the dead. Very few of them are interested in this unusual event. They are interested in each other or themselves, and show very well the curious tension between the individual and the collective, which is the essence of a crowd.
Kenneth Clark
Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.
A. P. Herbert
[A social worker has shown up to talk about Raffi's adoption during dinner with Toni's parents]
Sr. Ortiz: What's going on here?
Toni: Uh... mamá y papá, Gwynne... viene de la iglesia! ¡Sí, sí! Y viene para hablar... uh... del bautizo de Rafael! Decidimos que sería bueno que lo bautizaramos! (Mom, dad... Gwynne is... from the church! Yeah! And she's here to talk about, uh... Rafael's christening! We've decided to get him baptized!)
Sra. Ortiz: Gracias a Dios!
Sr. Ortiz: How very good of you to come, Sister.
Gwynne: Back at ya, brother! It's a pleasure in this day and age to meet folks who are so supportive of their daughter's decision.
Sra. Ortiz: That is unusual?! This country is even more wicked than I thought!
Gwynne: Yes, it's a shame, but many lesbians' parents tend to disapprove.
Sr. Ortiz: What does her being a ... a homosexual have to do with it?
Gwynne: Exactly, Mr. Ortiz! If only more people felt like you!
Alison Bechdel
