Quotes About Consequences

It has happened just about as I told you, M. Budd." Lanny said it was so, and thought that the death of something like a hundred and twenty-five thousand Frenchmen, and the captivity of ten or twelve times as many, signified less to Pierre Laval than the ability to say: "C'est moi qui avait raison!

The young people come along, and clamor so loudly for their share, and have so little idea of the pain that awaits them. One's heart aches at the knowledge, but one cannot tell them; they have to have their own way and pay their own penalties.

It is obvious that when a nation turns its whole substance into war materials, as Germany is doing now, the time will come when that nation has to go to war—it can do nothing else because it is equipped for nothing else; and it must use its armaments or else be suffocated under their weight.

You know the old doctrine that the end justifies the means. I was reading some modern philosopher the other day and noted the statement that it is the means that determine the end.

and impatience sets traps for us, and prepares regrets that sometimes last all our lives.

she was the kindest of souls; if she had ever done harm to any human being it was because the social system was too complicated for her to understand the consequences of her actions.

What shall we say to the wicked man to make him be good, if we cannot reward him with a heaven and frighten him with a hell? Well, my first answer is that we have been trying this process for a couple of thousand years, and the results seem to indicate that we might better seek out some other method of inducing men to behave themselves.

The consequences of the deal with the Darlan-Noguès outfit were the same here as in Algiers; perhaps even a little worse, because of General Patton, himself a reactionary martinet. The deal had saved many American lives, but it imperiled American principles and exposed American officers to temptations against which they had no weapons.

It made smuggling easy; but I was nervous of getting involved, because a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.

No civilization was so little equipped to cope with the outside world; no country was so easily raided and plundered, and learned so little from its disasters.

As might be expected with modern media reporting, every news report of some notable research advance has been commonly seen as moving us "closer" to the holy grail of nitrogen fixation in cereals—but "closer" remains elusive. "Substantial progress" reported in one year has no consequences five years later.

CFCs and DDT carry different, much more sobering but also expected lessons: human interventions in Earth's environment often carry delayed, complex risks, so far removed from the initial concern and so far beyond the readily conceivable complications that only time and the accumulation of events will make us aware of those unexpected but highly consequential impacts.

The verdict was obvious: CFCs were staying in the atmosphere, and because of their inertia nearly their entire post-1930 output was accumulating aloft. But did the presence of these compounds, as Lovelock's group concluded, pose "no conceivable hazard" because they did "not disturb the environment"—or could their accumulation have undesirable consequences?

We all make mistakes, Carol. Sometimes they're more expensive than others. But I don't deserve to lose you,' he said, spreading his hands in appeal.

Look at you. Finally, you look upset. Is that what's bothering you now?' She stepped close to him and pushed him hard in the chest, making him stumble backwards. 'The fact that you didn't predict this? Didn't work it out? That you're not as smart as you thought you were? the great Tony Hill fucked up and now my brother's dead?' She pushed him again and he had to twist away to avoid falling down the stairs.

So you're a functioning drunk. You don't have to be falling down in the street or pissing yourself or sleeping with unsuitable men or losing whole days at a time to be a drunk.

Remember what they say about bridges. The hard thing is to know which ones to cross and which ones to burn.

The trauma pervaded and persisted in many ways. Since Constantinople was taken on a Tuesday, Christians regarded every Tuesday thereafter as an unpropitious day.

Over many years bin Laden cited dozens of concocted reasons about why he attacked the United States; the only valid one was that he attacked America because he thought—to paraphrase Margaret Atwood—with good reason, he could get away with it.

Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.

Victor Davis Hanson

how putting global concerns above national interests insidiously erodes the financial health, freedoms, and safety of Americans. In blunter terms, when American elites feel their first concerns are with the world community abroad rather than with the interests of their own countrymen, there are consequences for American citizens.

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.