Top 100 Surprising People Quotes
#1. I always want to keep growing and keep surprising people, and showing them different parts of me.
Aubrey Plaza
#2. I just like surprising people. I never want to get to a place where people see that I am in a movie and they go see the movie and they expect a certain performance one way or the other. That is just inherently boring to me.
John C. Reilly
#3. Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.
Baltasar Gracian
#4. Surprising people is the key to career longevity for someone like me.
John C. Reilly
#5. I love surprising people with a present or a gift or a stage performance or anything.
Michael Jackson
#6. 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.
Alessia Cara
#7. I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people.
Bobby Vinton
#8. I've been boxing ever since I was 16. I love surprising people who think a short, blond girl can't fight! Just because I look a certain way doesn't mean I'm weak.
Brittany Snow
#9. I want to constantly be surprising people with different roles.
Emma Roberts
#10. The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.
Ricky Gervais
#11. Why is it that we love surprising people? Is it because we like to know something they don't Does it give us a sense of power over others? Was I happy because I was controlling Asher? Or was I simply trying to do something nice?
Matthew Quick
#12. People are obsessed with my haircut; everyone wants to do something with my hair before the ceremony. Very senior figures tell me their hairstylist wants to do my hair for free. It's surprising. People from television are interested almost exclusively in aspects of my hair and my hairdresser.
Ada Yonath
#13. If you had to jump six or seven feet or certainly drown, it's surprising how far even older people will jump.
Erik Larson
#14. That something so obvious as the vanity of the world should be so little recognized that people find it odd and surprising to be told that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is most remarkable.
Blaise Pascal
#15. Prayer is such a basic foundation of a Christian's relationship with God. It's how we communicate and fellowship with Him. But a surprising number of people, young and old, new and even long-time Christians, say they're not satisfied with their prayer life.
Joyce Meyer
#16. The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.
Franz Kafka
#17. I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.
Colin Firth
#18. Putting a rheumatologist at the head of a committee that arguably was going to have more influence over brain research than any particular institution in the country at the time, I think a lot of people found surprising.
Steve Fainaru
#19. A lot of people have been quite surprised with the stuff that I'm doing on my own, which shocks me because I've always known what I wanted to do. But people have only seen me with the Spice Girls, so I suppose it's not that surprising.
Melanie Chisholm
#20. There's a lot of UFO sightings in New Orleans, which isn't really too surprising. There's a lotta crazy people there. The people there lack the intelligence to know what they are seeing, so that's why the UFO's go there.
Billy Corgan
#21. Apparently people who were in books actually sounded like a book when they talked. This was quite the surprising discovery.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#22. The senator was the kind of man who, having expended all his empathetic capital on marrying someone surprising, wanted to make sure no other people had the ability to make their own choices for themselves. He was anti-immigration, antiwoman, antigay, and that was just for starters. To
Lauren Groff
#23. A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.
A.S. Byatt
#24. What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#25. But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.
Dave Eggers
#26. I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising, it's just a part of being a girl in 2013.
Lorde
#27. 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.
Ken Marino
#28. Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
Wendy Kaminer
#29. God takes great delight in surprising His people with His goodness. He delights in being there for us, in coming through for us. He loves to give us the good gifts of His provision and grace that reveal to us His nature and His character.
John Paul Jackson
#30. When people are against profits they're against business; when they're against business, they're against employment; when they're against employment, it's not surprising that a large number of them are unemployed.
Richard J. Needham
#31. What people might find surprising: I taught my wife to change diapers when we had our first.
Jorge Posada
#32. 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!
Daniel Tammet
#33. It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Barack Obama
#34. It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work.
Jimmy Wales
#35. You have always understood and accepted my most genuine, most intimate impulses and responded to them with surprising accuracy. I wish all people turned into such mirrors for each other.
Igor Eliseev
#36. The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.
Carol Bly
#37. If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.
Rodney Brooks
#38. I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.
William Monahan
#39. Every time I work out in the gym, every time I train, I know I'm going to do well. But I like surprising the fans, the critics, the people who doubt me.
Oscar De La Hoya
#40. I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.
Lisa Edelstein
#41. Given that Europe's legacy to the world consists in the two great goods of Christianity and democracy it is hardly surprising if the EU no longer has the endorsement of the European people, even if it has created a network of clients upon whose support it can always rely.
Roger Scruton
#42. This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names ...
Jamaica Kincaid
#43. I want to work with intelligent people and look for scripts that I think are intelligent and surprising.
Adam Brody
#44. People often find it surprising that actors find photo shoots difficult, because you're very concerned about what's going on externally in those things when you have to be concerned with what's going on internally as an actor.
Max Irons
#45. Surprising how many people assumed that when a helicopter failed it simply rotored on down. Truth was, it fell with the aerodynamics of a grand piano.
Carver Greene
#46. It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.
Rollo May
#47. It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.
Cory Doctorow
#48. I was dealing with craft, and that's the surprising thing, the number of people who have literally broken down on our stage, because when you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong.
James Lipton
#49. I tend to stay in character between scenes ... to be rather serious on set, but here's why, and I think people will find it surprising. I'm one of the worst 'corpses' on a movie set, which means you can't keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can't stop.
Christian Bale
#50. I think I could write another book as surprising as this one, or even as weird as this one; but it would no longer surprise people that I can be surprising. My audience would no longer find it weird to discover that I can be weird.
Bruce Sterling
#51. People are capable of surprising one frightfully. One gets an idea of them into one's head, and sometimes it's absolutely wrong. Not always - but sometimes.
Agatha Christie
#52. You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Daniel Kahneman
#53. It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.
Tony Benn
#54. It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them. This argument, as I said, is very interesting, and very surprising.
Meles Zenawi
#55. Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
#56. I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that. It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.
Phil Collins
#57. If there's one thing I learned from Rodrick, it's to set people's expectations real low so you end up surprising them by practically doing nothing at all.
Jeff Kinney
#58. Children do not see themselves as shocking or surprising and do not want other people to do so.
Elizabeth Ferrars
#59. There isn't much political coloration in my economic writing; it's not surprising that few people know my political views. They really aren't very important.
Christopher A. Sims
#60. It's sometimes surprising how people can open up when you demonstrate a willingness to listen to their stories with attentiveness and respect.
Kevin Fedarko
#61. I know it's surprising, but there is a generation of people who haven't seen a Bond movie. They have no idea what it is. I want to entertain them as much as anyone else.
Daniel Craig
#63. People love dogs. This is, I hope, the least surprising sentence you will read in this book. I myself have had long discussions with my dog friends, and by that I mean my friends who are dogs.
Bill Nye
#64. So when you are faced with a decision on the euro, it is not surprising that many people are confused. They still try to squeeze the euro debate into the old language. But deep down it is a matter of deciding where one's future lies. It is a matter of political will and courage.
Romano Prodi
#65. It's not surprising so many people end up with credit-card debts. Saving for your retirement and buying a house are difficult things, and we don't educate people about them at all.
Niall Ferguson
#66. The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not surprising when one deliberately goes against audience expectations.
John M. Ford
#67. It is surprising that people are snapping photos and stuff and then putting them on the internet. For me, it is like, "Why would you want to do that?" It would be like knowing what your Christmas presents were before Christmas morning.
Michael Shannon
#68. A surprising number, like options in the cereal aisle, liberal studies graduates working fast food, people who don't know Shakespeare coined the phrase break the ice.
Dennis Vickers
#69. As long as people tend to define themselves at least partially in terms of the work they do, any change to that work, its procedures and modes, is likely to have self-definitional importance to them. This can lead to surprising amounts of change resistance.
Tom DeMarco
#70. 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.
Matthew Bourne
#71. England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.
Stephen Daldry
#72. I'm kind of under the radar. Not a lot of people notice me. Which is surprising, because I'm so sexy. They're probably intimidated by my sexiness and crushability.
Will Forte
#73. It's really surprising that what you put on paper, people will believe.
Chaske Spencer
#74. I know it may seem surprising to people, but learning dialog that has a conversational flow to it is not that difficult.
Deidre Hall
#75. The most surprising fact that people do not know about breast cancer is that about 80% of women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have a single relative with breast cancer. Much more than just family history and inherited genes factor into the breast cancer equation.
Kristi Funk
#76. If you look at my life before I went into television, the struggle I went through coming out would be surprising to most people, given how comfortable and how out I am being the only late-night gay talk-show host.
Andy Cohen
#77. I think of a lot of comedy being watched alone, for some reason. It's surprising to me that people are getting together to watch stand-up comedy.
Gary Gulman
#78. [ ... ] nonstate conflicts kill far fewer people than conflicts that involve a government, perhaps a quarter as many. Again, this is not surprising, since goverments almost by definition are in the violence business.
Steven Pinker
#79. It's surprising to a lot of people because ballerinas look so long, but it's more of a proportion thing. Their legs are long in proportion to their body but in reality they're very tiny.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
#80. She had the resigned indifference of extreme old age. Buildings and empires rose and fell. It snowed. It stopped snowing. People came and went. One day death would come for her, and she would not find that surprising either, and she would not care -
Robert Harris
#81. 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.
Peter Higgs
#82. It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities.
Naguib Mahfouz
#83. It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.
Sydney J. Harris
#84. When somewhat at a distance, I cannot hear the high tones of instruments, voices. In speaking, it is not surprising that there are people who have never noticed it, for as a rule I am absent-minded, and they account for it in that way.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#85. No one in our time finds it surprising if a man gives careful daily attention to his body, but people would be outraged if he gave the same attention to his soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#86. I do dark [humor]. I like people who are silly and weird and people who are surprising and good at what they do.
Anthony Jeselnik
#87. Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.
Marisha Pessl
#88. Abortion is the easy way out. It's hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.
Tony Abbott
#89. It is not surprising, of course, that those who attempt to discredit the evidence of Scripture are the people who themselves do not seriously read, know, or make a thorough study of the Scriptures.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#90. I don't find it surprising that super-old people are so odd and grumpy. Half their friends are dead, they feel like shit most of the time, and the next major event in their lives is going to be their last. They
Michael Marshall
#91. There is a surprising amount of overlap between the storytelling and burlesque communities, maybe because they both, in a way, involve getting naked. People who choose to be vulnerable are rare. People who manage to do it well are even more so.
Mara Wilson
#92. One of the challenges of the show has always been trying to be surprising, and that was easy to do when nobody was watching it. Now that people have started watching it, they get ahead of us. We've all started really guarding the material, just to make it fun for the audience.
Mitchell Hurwitz
#93. People, even those closest to you, are surprising...Nobody is everything they seem.
Deborah Rodriguez
#94. I love Broadway. And, I listen to country music, which I think a lot of people find surprising.
Bryan Clay
#95. The power of telly is surprising. If you're in a six-part series, you're famous while it's on - people point in the street. Two weeks later it all goes back to normal.
Paul McGann
#96. It's surprising how many people get bogged down in analysing, planning, and organizing when what they really need to do is take action.
Jack Canfield
#97. The automatic use of Du, even to strangers if they were friends of friends, was very surprising. Sie, it seemed, meant relegation to the outer darkness and people had been known to fight with swords about the matter.
Patrick Leigh Fermor
#98. What is universal can be surprising. Over time you find the kind of stuff which has people thinking 'That is just something that occurred to me ... there's something wrong with me', is in fact stuff that is universal.
Dylan Moran
#99. 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.
Kyle Kinane
#100. Golf is said to be an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences.
Bobby Jones
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