Quotes About Consequences

The Statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Let us learn our lessons.

You see people every day who take a chance and damn the consequences. Many of them suffer for it, but I do not think they come off worst. The people who come off worst are the people who draw back at the last moment and spend the rest of their lives regretting it.

Human beings were blind, crazy creatures, he thought, forever walking the tightrope of the present condemned to ever changing shifts and expedients to maintain the balance of existence, not knowing even as far ahead as tomorrow what the actions of today would bring. How could one plan a year ahead, how influence the imponderables?

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings.

when the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

Would you rise in the world? You must work while others amuse themselves. Are you desirous of a reputation for courage? You must risk your life. Would you be strong morally or physically? You must resist temptations. All this is paying in advance; that is prospective finance. Observe the other side of the picture; the bad things are paid for afterwards.

The crimes of the vanquished find their background and their explanation, though not, of course, their pardon, in the follies of the victors. Without these follies crime would have found neither temptation nor opportunity.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders

Those that had done the least in the conflict were as might be expected the foremost in detailing the penalties of the vanquished.

the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

It is sometimes wise to allow natural processes to work, and crimes and follies to be paid in coin from their own mint.

In any quarrel among men, if one side proclaims its complete impotence of will and hand, there are no bounds to the evils that may ensue.

Those who do not learn from History are condemned to repeat it.

We have always sent two-thirds of what was necessary a month too late.

By what process could the slaughter of ten million men and the destruction of one-third of the entire savings of the greatest nations of the world have ushered in a Golden Age?

How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice! Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win.

Para crear las condiciones desfavorables para sí misma, en las que Alemania produjo la guerra, eran, sin embargo, todavía necesarios muchos actos de absoluta imprudencia por parte de sus gobernantes.

Russian maxim, "You may always walk with the Devil till you get to the end of the bridge.

But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be forgotten or forgiven.