System Shock Quotes & Sayings

After having your first child, it's a massive shock to the system. I work in an industry where people judge you and the way you look, and you always want to put your best foot forward when you can. — Louise Nurding

If you have a very hot experience then shock yourself with cold water, it's very very good for the nervous system. — Gwyneth Paltrow

When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it's not because I wish he were someone else, it's because it's such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned. — Emma Forrest

My disbelief paralyzes me temporarily as I stare at the sight of my arm vanishing into an implausibly small gap between the fallen boulder and the canyon wall. Within moments, my nervous system's pain response overcomes the initial shock. Good Christ, my hand. The flaring agony throws me into a panic, I grimace and growl a sharp "Fuck!" My mind commands my body, "Get your hand out of there!" I yank my arm three times in a naive attempt to pull it out.
But I'm stuck. — Aron Ralston

Something that came as a shock to me is that we do not have a constitutional right to vote. And that's not just a fun little historical factoid. It actually has huge ramifications. It's the reason our system is so decentralized - in other words, chaotic. — Mo Rocca

Looking past the immediate crisis, a more resilient system must be built on stronger and better designed shock absorbers, both in the major institutions and in the infrastructure of the financial system. — Timothy Geithner

Sometimes it takes a brush with eternity - a crash, an illness, some shock to the system - to get you really thinking about what you want to do with your limited time here, and why you're living on this wobbling dirt clod in the first place. — Hampton Sides

I'm sure you're used to hearing that when people get to Long Island for the first time, it's a bit of a shock to the system. But I found Long Island people very endearing. — Katie Nolan

It was a shock to my system leaving 'The West Wing' and going to 'Psych.' I remember being like, 'What are you doing?' when James Roday first started improvising. Steve and the writing staff write it that way. They leave gaps. — Dule Hill

... and that did it. That brought those depthless blue eyes within a foot, perhaps six inches, maybe even closer, and something happened inside Enrique, like a guitar string suddenly unstrung. There was a shock and a vibration in his heart, a palpable break inside the cavity of his chest. He had dropped out of high school and never took a class in anatomy, but he did know that the cardiovascular system wasn't supposed to react as if it were the source and center of feeling. And yet he would have sworn to all and sundry - not that he expected to admit it to anyone - that Margaret, or at least her bright blue eyes, had just snapped his brittle heart. — Rafael Yglesias

The problem is that, in a world of floating exchange rates, as Italy was before the euro, if one country is subjected to a shock which requires it to cut wages, it cannot do so with a modern kind of control and regulation system. It is much easier to do it by letting the exchange rate change. Only one price has to change, instead of many. — Milton Friedman

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them. — Thomas Paine

I am fairly embraced by the Hollywood community, and I love making movies and I love acting, but I'm not real crazy about the Hollywood system. So the fact that they embrace me is a shock to me because I tell them to kiss my ass all the time. I don't understand why they haven't thrown me out on my ear. The other thing is I don't participate much. I have very few friends within the movie community. I hang out with some guys I've known forever. They're all broke and eat me out of house and home. But I stay home mostly and I don't go to the parties. Maybe that preserves me. — Billy Bob Thornton

The Jewish day begins in the calm of evening, when it won't shock the system with its arrival. — Nathan Englander

Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids - all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine - it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order. — Bill Bryson

Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cuss words just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn't be considered cuss words anymore, and no one would ever be offended by them." This kid is hard to keep up with! "Your mother encourages you to cuss?" Gavin says. Kiersten nods. "I don't see it that way. It's more like she's encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they're just letters, mixed together like every other word. That's all they are, mixed-up letters. — Colleen Hoover

He really is a first-class waste of space, isn't he ?"
"Thank you" I said. It's nice when the people you love share your opinions.
"You're welcome," Dad said. "And the cartwheels would seem to imply that the new model's a good thing ?"
I looked at him with something close to shock. My father and I have a very satisfactory system in place, based on the unspoken agreement that I won't tell him about my love life and he won't ask. All that sort of carry-on is Mum's department, and she advises Dad on a need-to-know basis. "Um, yes," I said.
"Very good," said Dad and, clearly appalled at having strayed so far into this emotional minefield, he began to brush his teeth with most unnecessary vigour. — Danielle Hawkins

If you haven't been this close to superhumans, you don't understand what it's like to fight them. Even when you've got powers yourself, the predominent impression is one of shock. The forces moving around you are out of human scale, and your nervous system doesn't know how to deal with it. It's like being in a car accident, over and over again. You never feel the pain until later. — Austin Grossman

When World War II erupted, colonialism was at its apogee. The courde of the war, however, its symbolic undertones, would sow the seeds of the system's defeat and demise. [ ... ] The central subject, the essence, the core relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything-each eaxchange, connection, conflict-was translated into the language of black and white. [ ... ] Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constitute a homogenous, cohesive force. [ ... ] Then, suddenly, Africans recruited into the British and French armies in Europe observed that the white men were fighting one another, shooting one another, destroying one another's cities. It was revelation, a surprise, a shock. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

First, educate yourself about what a vegan diet entails and why it is beneficial to your health. You need to understand and embrace the philosophy or you will not be able to make such a drastic dietary change. Secondly, make the change over time. Don't try and "go cold turkey"; you will shock your system and you will develop cravings that you may not be able to fight off. If you take your time and let your body adjust you will be eating a completely different diet before you realize it. — Gary Player

I have been doing this since I was 10 years old. It wasn't like I was an overnight hit. I think when that happens to some actors - they just don't know what to do with themselves. You don't know how to cope with friends and all of a sudden not being able to go out. It's such a shock to your system. — Eliza Dushku

Willow nodded. "Far be it from me to make excuses for him, and I'm not trying to do that now. But you are the prettiest little thing, Nicks. And then you strap on that guitar, and you turn into a ten-foot-tall warrior woman. I imagine you were a shock to Mr. Jensen's nervous system the first time he saw you. He has no justification for being an idiot, but I'll tell you, based on what I know about men, that his reaction was understandable to a certain extent. You must've come across like a ten on the Richter scale the first time he saw you play. — Shari Copell

I've come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn't properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That's what shock is. — Darin Strauss

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

Sometimes a shock to the system is a good thing, you know? Like a reminder that you're alive. — Jessi Kirby

It takes a shock to the system, doesn't it, to make a man realize what good things he has. — Graham Moore

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock. — Gordon Allport

Although the Civil War was an apocalyptic success in the sense that it brought an end to nearly a century of struggle and broken hopes regarding the ultimate extinction of African American slavery, it also combined new freedoms, as in other major revolutions, with shock, breakdown, trauma, and tragedy. Neither desired nor accurately anticipated by leaders in the North and South, the war dramatized the failure of the whole American system of political negotiation and compromise that had never weakened the institution of slavery but had supported democratic government for whites for over eighty years. < ... > Moreover, the long-term outcome of this revolutionary decision would be determined within a context of sectional hate and bitterness, political revenge, and competing presssures for reconciliation, reunion, and forgiveness. — David Brion Davis

I'd never experienced stress before I did stand-up, and it was a massive shock to my system, this thing of waking up, and the nerves of, 'You're on stage tonight.' — Johnny Vegas

Typically, defenders of experiments on animals do not deny that animals suffer. They cannot deny the animals' suffering, because they need to stress the similarities between humans and other animals in order to claim that their experiments may have some relevance for human purposes. The experimenter who forces rats to choose between starvation and electric shock to see if they develop ulcers (which they do) does so because the rat has a nervous system very similar to a human being's, and presumably feels an electric shock in a similar way. — Peter Singer

It took me a very long time to heal. It was a shock to my system. — Nicole Kidman

Unfortunately, the rights to 'System Shock' trademark and copyright are both up in the air. — Warren Spector

Fame is always a shock to the system; there's no school to go to, there are no books to read, and when it hits you, it's a surprise. You could be working for 10, 20 years and when it finally hits you, you get knocked down. — Barry Manilow

A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity. - Don't put all your eggs in one basket. — Donella H. Meadows

It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well. — Douglas Adams

And her stare is a force I feel could shock my system like a defibrillator, restarting my heart. — Sarah Noffke

We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. — Howard Warren Buffett