Quotes About Consequences

I've heard it said that we are the sum total of every choice we've ever made.

Quite apart from the fact that we usually pay so dearly for our follies, we should be generous about them, to ourselves and others. Yes, we always pay for them, and sometimes the smallest indiscretions cost as much as the largest.

TAKING THE LONG VIEW, we are still a young civilization and our culture is a work in progress. In our policies, programs, and plans for caring for people through the end of life, we have been acting childishly: ignoring basic responsibilities, indulging in magical thinking (If we ignore it, maybe it will go away), and fighting without regard to the consequences.

The exercise of power is a dangerous delight.

There are no spare unrecorded encapsulated moments in which we can behave 'anyhow' and then expect to resume life where we left off.

Perhaps one could not live with such knowledge. One might die for it, or of it.

How can I even think of such a fate . . . Better to commit murder.

How much harm, eddying outward in fateful circles, Clement was beginning to foresee.

We are all mad sometimes, but it passes. The consequences do not pass.

In the clairvoyance of this despair he had seen how much his folly had already damaged both of them.

You say we don't know the consequences of actions. But we don't know the consequences of inactions either, and inactions are actions.

How could he assess her like this because of something which had happened in the past? The past was never real for Dora. The notion that Paul might keep her past alive to torment her with, now occurred to her for the first time.

Because of what you have done things will happen later which can't possibly be foreseen.

Things which he and she had done and been in years past were having their deep inevitable consequences.

But even Es and cocaine, over the years they blow holes in your brain, rob you of your memories, your past. Which is fair enough, convenient even.

I wouldn't care about hurting myself or anybody else. Because I know now that doing things doesn't hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them

Two choices; one: tough it oot, back in the room, two: phone that cunt Forrester and go tae Muirhoose, get fucked aboot and ripped oaf wi some crap gear. Nae contest. In twenty minutes it wis: — Muirhoose pal? tae the driver oan the 32 bus and quiveringly stickin ma forty-five pence intae the the box. Any port in a storm, and it's raging in here behind ma face.

if yir gaunny git hung fir stealin a sheep ye might as well shag it n aw.

I suppose there's no way of putting the mushroom cloud back into that nice, shiny uranium sphere.

You must have minimalism because every change, any change, has myriad side effects that can't always be allowed for. If the change is too great and the side effects too many, then it becomes certain that the outcome will be far removed from anything you've planned and that it would be entirely unpredictable.

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication—and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking—and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation—and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful—and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions—and intensified the population explosion.

A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being's ultimate good after all.

But I'd be killed, and I never like to count on that when I'm making plans. It doesn't pay off.

Better your own road to hell than another's road to heaven