History is merely a list of surprises. ... It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
--
Ch. 48Kurt Vonnegut
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To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it’s always pleasantly.
Orson Scott Card
Years of solitude had taught him that, in one's memory, all days tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or in the hospital, which does not bring surprises, which is not a translucent network of minimal surprises.
Jorge Luis Borges
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
The ultimate meaning of the angry young man is not known. What is known is the shape of his greatest fear—that all of his efforts, from learning to speak to learning to write, to write well, to write badly, to write angrily, from learning to despise to learning to abominate, to abominate well, to abominate badly, to abominate abominably, to rant, to fulminate, to shout down the sea, to age, to age graefully, to age awkwardly, to age at all, to think, to regret, to list himself in the newspapers under “Lost and Found”, might culminate precisely in this: a roaring, raging, crazy mad passionate bibliography.
Donald Barthelme
It is my contention that most people are not mugged every day, that most people in this world do not encounter violence every day. I think we prepare people for violence, and I think it just as important that we prepare people for the definition of being gentle. ... for so many years gentle has been equated with weakness but it requires more strength to be gentle. So it's the every day encounters of life that I think we prepare children for and prepare them to be good to other people and to consider other people.
Bob Keeshan
Vonnegut, Kurt
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