What shocked us the most was that we had no idea why we should be so shocked. Like opening a ginger ale and finding Jamesons' inside: nothing wrong with it, but it sort of takes you by surprise.

Politics sometimes plays strange tricks on you. “We were surprised, just like everyone else.

But some of us have been educated by surprises out of much that we were 'absolutely sure' of...

When surprise occurs, such as when the economy enters an unexpected recession or a conflict begins seemingly out the blue, the natural reaction is to immediately ask who made the “obvious” mistake. It is much easier to believe that our leaders are incompetent than to accept the less pleasant reality that ours is a world where uncertainty and surprise are the norm, not the exception.

In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a... collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.

We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement.

Sometimes you have an idea of what your work means to people and other times you don’t and with the internet it was such an immediate and visceral reaction to it and we were just so happy and are still so happy.

Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown -even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to.

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

The students are asked to rate their level of surprise on a five-point scale from ‘not surprised at all’ to ‘beyond shock’. Many describe feelings of total shock and numbness: a large majority indicate some level of surprise. He asks them: “Why were you surprised?

I now cherish the ability to be surprised by things that come up unexpectedly, by beautiful things and new perspectives that emerge out of the blue, even in the most conventional and repetitive settings. The ability to be surprised surprises me.

What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.

I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.

Oh, it was a real shock when we saw the Creature. And you can see from the pictures in the book that I look a little awestruck, kind of taken aback when I saw it at first. I thought it was quite wonderful, extraordinary, and a little scary which of course is exactly what is was supposed to be.