Quotes About Consequence

he had so little to lose. She accepted since she had no choice.

Never cross a river if it is on average four feet deep

judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.

The payoff, what happens to you (the benefits or harm from it), is always the most important thing, not the event itself.

True and False (hence what we call "belief") play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates—and it is almost always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other

you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other.

the probability (hence True/False) does not work in the real world; it is the payoff that matters.

Freedom entails risks—real skin in the game. Freedom is never free.

the mistake may turn out to be inconsequential. Or

But since abundance would bring the opposite effect

Intersecting lives shape each other only to become footnotes.

Since self-esteem is a consequence, a product of internally generated practices, we cannot work on self-esteem directly, neither our own nor anyone else's.

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.

She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be for good.

So something that never should have happened did, all because of my thoughts and actions. A clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship. I was the one who caused it, and I should probably get the death penalty. Or maybe what I should say is I'm the one who pronounced the death sentence on myself

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

Sniper is now precisely where some Polity AI wants him and, that being so, some sort of shit is about to hit the fan, because no AI will employ Sniper if a talent for diplomacy or advanced macramé is required.

Tranq'd by your own gun,Lev says.How pathetic.

The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass... ...and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night. My God... what have we done?

shouldn't the punishment for failure be the awful knowledge of that failure?

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone "reaping" than "killing"—and when one knows that death isn't the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

The world has a talent for rewarding bad behavior with stardom

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

s]ometimes doing the right thing means doing the wrong thing first.