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Consequence Quotes

“The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.”

Humans Made Action Certain Choices Teach Consequence Undone Human Actions Actions Have Consequences

Book:Why History Matters: Life and Thought

Source: Why History Matters: Life and Thought

“We hear from time to time about horrible human rights atrocities happening around the globe. Our government claims that it stands in favor of human rights, and our leaders are in the news demanding consequences for other countries that are abusing their populations. But there is a huge denial about how widespread and common these kinds of atrocities are in the United States, and that we are not nearly as different from other countries as we would like to believe we are.”

“The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”

Humans Expression Consequence Ultimate Finals Organized Concentration Camps Abandonment Concentration Camp Separateness Dehumanization

Book:The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller

Source: The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller

“Self-interest and mutual interest are inextricably linked. National interests can best be advanced through collective action, ... Calculate not just the human misery of the poor themselves. Calculate our loss: The aid, the lost opportunity to trade, the short-term consequences of the multiple conflicts; the long-term consequences on the attitude to the wealthy world of injustice and abject deprivation amongst the poor.”

“A book may lie dormant for fifty years or for two thousand years in a forgotten corner of a library, only to reveal, upon being opened, the marvels or the abysses that it contains, or the line that seems to have been written for me alone. In this respect the writer is not different from any other human being: whatever we say or do can have far-reaching consequences.”

“When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?”

Thinking Men Should Humans Law Justice Principles Conscience Consequence Eternity This Life Contradiction

Author:William Wilberforce

“Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.”

“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”

“There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passions--does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.”

Thinking Mind Humans Doe Passion Human Beings Consequence Rising Dread

Book:Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.”

Men Giving Humans Long Ends Enough Action Pain Together Suffering Pleasure Events Consequence Chains This Life Providence Linked

Book:The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition

Source: The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition

“If we can sympathise only with the utterly blameless, then we can sympathise with no one, for all of us have contributed to our own misfortunes - it is a consequence of the human condition that we should. But it does nobody any favours to disguise from him the origins of his misfortunes, and pretend that they are all external to him in circumstances in which they are not.”

Ifs Should Humans Doe Conditions Circumstances Consequence Misfortunes Human Condition Disguise Favour Blameless

Author:Anthony Daniels

“The "Lucifer Effect" describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in "total situations," where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.”

“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.”

Source: Why History Matters: Life and Thought

“The ultimate cause of human disease is the consequence of our transgression of the universal laws of life.”

Humans Law Causes Disease Consequence Ultimate Universal Transgression Universal Laws Laws Of Life

Author:Paracelsus

“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.”

Thinking Humans Asks Language Ability Consequence Sophisticated Spoken Language

Author:Jane Goodall

“In all my work, I'm interested in trying to understand the human consequences of government policies.”

Trying Humans Government Policy Consequence Government Policy

Author:Laura Poitras

“The human brain is the only object in the known universe that can predict its own future and tell its on fortune. The fact that we can make disastrous decisions even as we foresee their consequences is the great, unsolved mystery of human behavior. When you hold your fate in your hands, why would you ever make a fist?”

Humans Facts Hands Universe Decision Brain Known Fate Mystery Objects Behavior Consequence Fortune Human Behavior Fists Human Brain Unsolved Mysteries

Author:Daniel Gilbert

“In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.”

“Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honour to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.”

Way Humans Ideas War Age Human Beings Higher Consequence Sake Welcome Honour Heroism Search For Knowledge

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“I think that will only really change when the human races begins to suffer some of the extremely severe consequences of climate change which may be some decades ahead. They will then realise, as we have with the financial crisis, that we are up against the wall and hitting the buffers and we have got to change.”

Thinking Humans May Suffering Race Wall Consequence Crisis Climate Climate Change Financial Decades Human Race Realising Hitting Severe Financial Crisis

Author:Michael Meacher

“Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one-the triumph of Christianity -that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.”

“It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.”

Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages

“The coarsening of our culture towards violent death has more consequences than war. Tragically, this same culture has led to the death of 50 million unborn children in the last 40 years. I don't think a civilization can long endure that does not have respect for all human life, born and not yet born. I believe there will come a time when we are all judged on whether or not we took a stand in defense of all life from the moment of conception until our last natural breath.”

“A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical enactments.”

Source: Has Humanity Gained from Unbelief?: Two Nights Debate Between Marsden Gibson and Charles Bradlaugh at Newcastle-on-Tyne

“That's generally true of people who drop bombs from high altitudes. You don't know what's going on below. You don't see the human consequences of what you're doing.”

People Knows Humans Consequence Bombs

Author:Howard Zinn

“Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.”

Source: On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings

“Human rights are an aspect of natural law, a consequence of the way the universe works, as solid and as real as photons or the concept of pi. The idea of self- ownership is the equivalent of Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by natural selection, of general relativity, and of quantum theory. Before humankind discovered any of these, it suffered, to varying degrees, in misery and ignorance.”

“An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.”

Men Want Humans Littles Sometimes Too Much Worst Conditions Human Nature Consequence Guilt Harm Miserable Innocence Suspicion Distrust

Book:Israel Potter: Works of Melville

Source: Israel Potter: Works of Melville

“The internet is the most complex system that humans have ever invented. And with every internet enabled operation that we've seen so far, all of these offensive operations, we see knock on effects. We see unintended consequences.”

Humans Effects Internet Consequence Complexes Operations Offensive Complex Systems Unintended Consequences

Author:Edward Snowden

“The world's problems are, by and large, human problems-the unavoidable consequence of egoic sleepwalking. If we care to look, all the signs are present to suggest that we are not only sleepwalking, but at times borderline insane as well.”

Ifs World Humans Wells Looks Problem Care Consequence Insane Borderline Human Problems Sleepwalking

Author:Adyashanti

“Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.”

Humans Mean Ends Goodness Consequence And Love Eternity Selfishness Bliss Contemplation Divinity Attributes Constructs Identical Omnipotent Ineffable

Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

“... it is as true in morals as in physics that all force is imperishable; therefore the consequences of a human action never cease.”

Humans Action Force Moral Influence Morality Consequence Physics Cease Human Actions

Author:Tennessee Celeste Claflin

“The connectedness of things is what the educator contemplates to the limit of his capacity. No human capacity is great enough to permit a vision of the world as simple, but if the educator does not aim at the vision no one else will, and the consequences are dire when no one does.”

Ifs World Humans Doe Enough Simple Vision Teaching Limits Consequence Capacity Aim Permit Contemplating Educator Connectedness Human Capacity

Author:Mark Van Doren

“In a culture of electronic violence, images that once caused us to empathize with the pain and trauma of another human being, excite a momentary adrenaline rush. To be numb to another's pain - to be acculturated to violence - is one of the worst consequences our technological advances. That indifference transfers from the screen, TV, film, Internet, and electronic games to our everyday lives.”

“I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.”

“It is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.”

Knows Humans Action Asks Responsibility Consequence

Book:Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life

Source: Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life

“From wherever the emissions come, they have the same effect: They trap much more heat from the sun, melt the ice, raise the sea level, cause stronger storms, floods, drought, bigger fires, generate millions of climate refugees, destabilize political systems, threaten the growing of food crops and cause a number of other catastrophic consequences which, taken together, threaten the basis for the future of human civilization on the Earth.”

“New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness. A lot of people seem to be similar to the kid in school, which is doing a lot of things with no direct consequence to their joy, or their lives.”

People Humans Seems Kids School Joy Wealth Cold Lows Consequence Direct Intense Concentration Jersey New Jersey Human Happiness Concentration Of Wealth

Author:Ezra Miller

“Although the decision to get a dog can seem light on the surface, it's actually a long-term commitment much like a human mate. The consequences of a bad decision can be difficult for everyone involved.”

Humans Long Light Seems Difficult Term Decision Dog Involved Commitment Consequence Surface Long Term Mates Bad Decision

Author:Elizabeth Holmes

“The flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by actors, and these unintended consequences also may form unacknowledged conditions of actions in a feedback fashion. Human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project; it persistently eludes efforts to bring it under conscious direction.”

Humans May Action Form Actors Effort Conditions Fashion Produce Activity Projects Conscious Consequence Flow Feedback Human History Elude Unintended Consequences

Author:Anthony Giddens

“Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.”

Humans Matter Consequence Foolish Imperfect Aesthetic Scepticism

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years, by turning, by forcing myself to separate at some level the humanity of a human being from his or her actions and recognizing that sometimes, even the moral aspects of a human being can contribute to immoral behavior.”

Trying Years Humans Sometimes Done Action Lying Humanity Human Beings Levels Moral Practice Behavior Empathy Consequence Aspect Justify Recognizing Immoral

Author:Joshua Oppenheimer

“In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.”

World Humans Race Consequence Method Complexes Human Race Scientific Method

Author:Robert A. Heinlein

“Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it-have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.”

Men World Humans Taken Wise Cutting Consequence Wake Up Good Man Throat Change For The Better Housekeeping

Book:Essays, English and American

Source: Essays, English and American

“I think I have quite traditional views on original sin, grace, and the real but difficult nature of we humans being able to learn something true about being human that we didn't know before. And yet the consequences of this traditional view are really quite radical.”

Thinking Knows Humans Real Able Difficult Sin Views Grace Consequence Originals Traditional Radical Being Human Original Sin

Author:James Alison

“Climate change hype has grave real world consequences. It gets rich countries to adopt silly policies and to impose devastating eco-imperialism on poor countries. The world's rich millions can afford environmental extremism; its poor billions can't. Climate change pseudo-science about human causality has been exposed repeatedly. What's less appreciated is that there aren't more natural disasters in need of an explanation.”

“Given all that history has shown us of the consequences of technology - from the atlatl spear to the A-bomb - why have so few groups of human beings managed to resist the incursions of technology? Or be choosy about the extent to which they'll employ a technological innovation?”

Humans Given Human Beings Technology Groups Consequence Innovation Bombs Technological Spears Choosy

Author:Stephanie Mills

“A deep analysis judges technology morally - from its conception and intention to the totality of its consequences, knowing that all "raw materials" once were someone's home or sustenance, that extraction and manufacture at industrial scale reduce landscapes and their human beings, that distribution, employment, and disposal of technologies change lives in unpredictable ways.”

“My point taken further is that 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, i.e., harboring positive and negative asymmetries (fragile or antifragile). Let me explain.”

Humans Play Belief Decision Poor Roles Taken Consequence Negative Let Me Bigger Fragile Payoff True And False Asymmetry

Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.”

Needs Humans States Social Liberty Diversity Consequence Deeper Libertarian Assumption Association Intervention Social Life Human Needs

Book:For Reasons Of State

Source: For Reasons Of State