Unsettling Quotes

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. (Edith Wharton)

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

Marlon Brando

A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.

William O. Douglas

I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing - for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

Joyce Carol Oates

Certainly, for a newspaper director, to have within arm's reach a Travaglio, about whom every starring actor, supporting cast and extra of Italian political life he is ready upon cold request to provide an inquiry brief refined in the most minute details is a nice comfort. But also a bit unsettling. The day I asked him if in that archive, into which no one is allowed to stick their nose, there were a brief with my name on it, Marco changed the subject.

Indro Montanelli

What are you looking at, foreigner?” the guard demanded roughly. The smile was a little unsettling. A prisoner shouldn't smile at his captors like that. "I'm just making sure I can remember you,” Gilan told him. "Never know when that might be useful.

John Flanagan

The more you fly, the more unsettling it is, because you realize how much more likely it will be for you to crash. I am getting better at it, though.

Kit Harington

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.

Amity Shlaes

You can work, shop, do everything from home, and I find this unsettling.

Patrice Leconte

But if we can't help our latent biases, we can help our behavior in response to those instinctive reactions, which is why we work to design systems and processes that overcome that very human part of us all. Although the research may be unsettling, it is what we do next that matters most.

James Comey

Hassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed. (Khaled Hosseini)

In any case, the thought of a catastrophe or holocaust unleashed by accidental (i.e. nonhistorical) causes might be very unsettling to any Marxists who had a passionate belief in a deterministic theory of history. Instead of saying "It is inevitable that we will take over the world in fifty years", this Marxist would have to add, "Always assuming some capitalist fool doesn't press the button."

Herman Kahn

Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were executed because of the unsettling, threatening power of their souls, which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words.

Thomas Moore

The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.

Stephen King

When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I've always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.

Gottfried Helnwein

It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters.

Sarah Dessen

Of all the indignities to have been visited upon Dracula during the past century (including being the "inspiration" for a cereal and a Sesame Street character, and being lampooned by Mel Brooks), none is more unsettling than what has happened to the world's most famous vampire in Dracula 2000. Dimension Films, the exploitation division of Miramax, decided that, with their two horror franchises currently on hold (the Scream and Halloween films), they would turn their attention in another direction. So they sunk their greedy fangs into the most venerable monster they could find and sucked him dry.

James Berardinelli

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case."

Sydney J. Harris

To the young, what can be more disturbing, what more unsettling and tantalizing, than the play of vague suspicions? The fancy, ceasing to wander in the void, concentrates upon a definite aim, and luxuriates in the febrile pleasures of the chase.

Stefan Zweig

. . . You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong? Charlie: No, no, I'm okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it's unsettling.

Christopher Moore (author)

Margarete saw, and disapproved, and understood. It was perfectly natural that Youth, being given a new and revolutionary truth, should embrace it too eagerly, should defend it too loudly, should proclaim it in the extremest terms and without regard for the sensibilities of others. Natural, too, that Age, vested as it was in things as they had always been, should reject the truth as unsettling and dangerous. In the ace of such strong emotions, the only sane thing to do therefore was to embrace the truth circumspectly, to hide one's new allegiance from one's elders. (Michael Swanwick)

The truly unsettling thing about being a woman was needing a man to realise one's full potential.

Margaret Way

Nico drew his sword. His smile was even more unsettling than his scowl. "Underground," he said. "My favorite place." Underground wasJason's favorite place.

Rick Riordan

Have you ever been married? Had that thing of someone calling you by a name not your own? It's unsettling. It's like a fictitious person.

Stacy Schiff

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

Tom Chatfield

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