Quotes About Consequences

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason.

Amnesty is a terrible policy, and it's terrible politics. It's a terrible policy because you are rewarding people for breaking the law.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

If U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious.

When politicians deny anything fiercely, there is a good chance that it will happen.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

In politics, as in womanizing, failure is decisive. It sheds its retrospective gloom on earlier endeavor which at the time seemed full of promise.

If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly.

The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.

Our elections are free-it's in the results where eventually we pay.

Revenge is not a good thing. Revenge is like politics: one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.

I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.

The art of politics is to separate actions from consequences

There's a flip side to having prominent public intellectuals, which is that they start meddling in politics and often with quite disastrous results.

Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came? Why then, the war would come to you!

It's generally not wise to pick a fight with law enforcement in politics, especially when you're in the middle of a pretty significant scandal already.

The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.

When you're in politics sometimes you step on toes and they come back and kick you in the backside.