Quotes About Consequences

The New York Times proclaimed that if the votes in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were certified in favor of Tilden, thus electing him over Hayes, the North—twelve years following Appomattox—would have lost the Civil War to the South: "it will be the sign of the subjugation of the nation by the rebels." The

Angered by the taunts of the black soldiers and especially by the Union refusal to surrender, necessitating the paying of more precious Confederate lives for this victory he had to have, he may have ragingly ordered a massacre and even intended to carry it out—until he rode inside the fort and viewed the horrifying result. Then,

Curse him to eternal damnation! Yes! Of course!" came the emotional reply. "Don't curse him," I said softly. "Remember--he's only a machine, just an imperfect mirror of ourselves. We made him what he is--the disease, the cancer." There was nothing else to say, because that left only cursing ourselves, and we were already cursed.

Power without the wisdom to use it properly was a very good definition of evil,

I was thinking how much trouble people get into because they can't keep their mouths shut.

Stupidity is always expensive

Doesn't matter, does it?" said George. "They're just as dead. Their blood is on your hands." "They don't have blood." "Humans are only literal when they're ashamed of something.

the protagonist-complication-resolution model for story. You see it in various forms. Philip Gerard, who writes both novels and book-length narrative nonfiction, says a story follows when "a character we care about acts to fulfill his desires with important consequences.

If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy.

When you own your choices, you own their consequences.

A kingdom needs tending, just like a cheese. Leave a cheese too long and the whey settles to the bottom and sours the whole. Leave a kingdom for too long and others rise to the top and take the whole.

The world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember.

Sensuality begins sometimes with kindness, but it ends always in the most reckless and intolerable cruelty.

Pearl rolled a tiny pink speck in her fingers, possibly part of Rose's new leg that I'd tried so hard to make a good match. Pearl laughed and flicked it away as if it was snot out of her nose. I suddenly couldn't stand it. I rushed at her.She saw I wasn't playing around. She ran for it but I caught up with her along the landing. I punched her hard in the chest and she staggered back wards - back and back, and then she wobbled and went right over, down the stairs.

There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life.

When I say "I am filled with rage," the criminal says, "But why?"And when I blow things up and make life generally unlivable for the criminal (is my life not unlivable too?) the criminal is shocked, surprised. But nothing can erase my rage- not an apology, not a sum of money, not the death of the criminal- for this wrong can never be made right, and only the impossible can make me still: can a way be found to make what happened not have happened?

Like her, all of the members of this organization were well off but they made no connection between their comforts and the decline of the world that lay before them.

A choice with no consequences has no value. Making a choice knowing there will be consequences, and being willing to bear them, is what distinguishes the right choices from the wrong ones.

Begetting a child is at least as serious an act as murder...

You never live an inch without involvement and hurting people and fucking yourself everlastingly.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results.

When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl--the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.