Quotes About Contingency

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

It's still all "ifs" "buts" and "maybes".' 'Maybe, ' I said. 'But if what I'm saying is correct …

Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.

They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Never expect anything, but plan for everything.

Always have a backup plan.

Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.

I'm the kind of person who always has a Plan B. I don't want to go into anything without another option.

If Plan A fails, they could always revert to Plan A.

You just need a good plan and then a back-up plan!

Always plan, but never plan on your plans.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

It's always good to have different plans.

In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.

Hayden] white argues instead for histories that avoid narrative closure and that highlight the contingency of the past ... He points especially to chronicle - a form marked by a lack of closure - as a useful alternative to the narrative. In a chronicle, historians offer an interpretation of the past but simply end the account when they reach the present.

Cover the downside.

These are not men of great imagination, but one can hardly blame them for not being prepared for this particular contingency, the sight of a tweet-jacketed, tenured, middle-aged, senior professor and department chair in a fake nose and glasses, brandishing a live, terrified goose... (Richard Russo, Straight Man)

But you will no doubt agree that the very best staff plans are those which give clear margins of error to allow for those days when an employee is ill or for one reason or another below par.

Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if."

The emergency that always gets you in the end is the one you didn't prepare for.

From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.