Quotes About Consequences

In a mass television democracy - which all of us nowadays have - it is impossible to take basic political decisions with long-term consequences without the public knowing it, without the public understanding at least some of it, without the public forming its judgment, heterogeneous as it may be.

All my books deal with the effect of intent upon action, how our understanding of good and evil depends heavily on context.

All too often politicians sign treaties in a hurry, without reading them properly, and without understanding where they will lead.

One phrase I would dearly like to consign to the can is 'Out of the Box.' The thinking that told us we should invade Iraq and that house prices never decline may have been out of the box, but it put us into the ditch. We have been badly misled by people who persuaded us that they understood things we didn't.

Creating a new air traffic control regulator outside of the FAA would be a risky and expensive undertaking, the consequences and costs of which would be borne by American taxpayers and the traveling public.

No one knows the future. I may attend someone's party today who may become an underworld don tomorrow, so how can I be blamed?

It is possible that a scientific discovery will be made that humans will later regret because it has awful consequences. The problem is, we probably would not know in advance and, once the discovery is made, it cannot be undiscovered.

You can't undo a deportation.

We might knit that knot with our tongues that we shall never undo with our teeth.

BP cannot undo a settlement it negotiated and signed just to avoid its consequences.

These deserters were our undoing. I shall have a good deal more to say about them before I finally lay down my pen, and I shall not hesitate to call them by their true name, the name with which they will be for ever branded before all the nations of the world.

You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you're uneasy with? 'Because it'll make you money' is a common reply. But I don't think that's good enough.

You won't be exiled to permanent unemployment just because there's a picture somewhere of you holding a red Solo cup and looking underage. But, your Google results tell a story: Have you been in the news? Authored articles or blog posts? What types of topics do you frequently tweet about?

When Europe dominated, there were no or few feedback loops. Or, to put it another way, there were few, if any, consequences for its behaviour towards the non-western world: relations were simply too unequal.

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign.

The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation.

Margaret Thatcher was not a malicious person. She was a person who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, the unfairness and disadvantaging consequences of the application of what she thought to be a renewing ideology.

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

How did it happen that an enlightened country like Germany was pulled into Nazism? That question has occupied me since 'The Tin Drum,' my first book. The story also shows that we can never know how a person's life will unfold; there is no guarantee that a person will do what is right and avoid what is not right.

Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise.

One of the key issues will be personal honour vs. the good of the many, and unforeseen consequences.

I want diversity to be at the very heart of the BBC and not delivered by some other party with increased government interference, bureaucracy and unforeseen consequences.

Every single unfortunate thing that happens, including, for instance, the murder of my parents, I am responsible for. I am responsible for being the son of two people who got murdered. I didn't cause their murder. But if I'm suffering because of it, it's my karma that I have manifested in this lifetime in this particular set of circumstances.