Selected consequences quotes

1. Just as rust, which arose from the iron itself, wears out the iron, likewise, performing an action without examination would destroy us by projecting us into a negative state of existence.

2. The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

3. Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

4. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

5. Bad men are full of repentance.

6. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

7. The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

8. Do what you know is right, but try not to get caught.

9. War its thousands slays, Peace its ten thousands.

10. If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you.

11. What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.

12. Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

13. Eat in the dark the bargain that you purchased in the dusk.

14. It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

15. Cure the disease and kill the patient.

16. The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

17. Mordre wol out, that se we day by day.

18. Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.

19. Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

20. Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

21. Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

22. How can we expect something positive to come from all the negative that we put into this world?

23. Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

24. He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.

25. If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

26. The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

27. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit.

28. Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.

29. Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

30. Revenge proves its own executioner.

31. I find the medicine worse than the malady.

32. Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

33. Kindness goes a long ways lots of times when it ought to stay at home.

34. Men are not punished for their for sins, but by them.

35. I have gotten so many tickets. I hope I don't get my license revoked.

36. It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.

37. If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.

38. Things omitted are often more deadly than errors committed.

39. Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.

40. If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do.

41. Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory... the Lorax... and I.

42. You never can tell when you do an act Just what the result will be; But with every deed you are sowing a seed, Though the harvest you may not see. Each kindly act is an acorn dropped In God's productive soil; You may not know, yet the tree shall grow And shelter the brows that toil. You never can tell what your thoughts will do In bringing you hate or love; For thoughts are things, and their airy wings Are swifter than carrier doves. They follow the law of the universe- Each thing must create its kind; And they speed o'er the track to bring you back Whatever went out from your mind.

43. Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.

44. At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.

45. I was pulled over in Massachusetts for reckless driving. When brought before the judge, I was asked if I knew what the punishment for drunk driving in that state was. I said, 'I don't know... reelection to the Senate?' (a reference to the Chappaquiddick incident)

46. Notre repentir n'est pas tant un regret du mal que nous avons fait, qu'une crainte de celui qui nous en peut arriver.

47. Il n'est pas si dangereux de faire du mal a la plupart des hommes que de leur faire trop de bien.

48. Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too deep or a kiss too long, And then comes a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.

49. A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.

50. Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms.

51. The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.

52. He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

53. If you fall out of that window and break both your legs, don't come running to me.

54. Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

55. Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets, With a third dog one of the two dogs meets; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.

56. What! Would you slap the Porcupine? Unhappy child - desist! Alas! That any friend of mine Should turn Tupto-philist.

57. It's the story of a very unfortunate colored man Who got arrested down in Old Hong Kong He got twenty years' privilege taken away from him When he kicked old Buddha's gong.

58. I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

59. Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

60. The spirits that I summoned up I now can't rid myself of.

61. Those who in quarrels intepose Must often wipe a bloody nose.

62. There was this vicious woman [at school], a teacher. If you weren't in her little handpicked clique, you were ridiculed and picked on. She was brutal and unjust. One day she told me to do something, I can't remember what. Her tone was nasty. She got very loud in my face in front of the rest of the class and tried to embarrass me. I saw what she was doing, that she was trying to ridicule me. I turned around and walked away. As I did, I dropped my drawers and mooned her. She went out of her mind. Then of course I was brought before the dean and suspended for a couple of weeks. At that time it was coming anyway. I knew my days were numbered. (2004)

63. He made a mistake, you know? And if he hadn't done this particular thing that night, it wouldn't have been... but he was... it happened. (1995)

64. 'Over here is the drug trade we die for drugs/ Over there they die from what we buy from drugs'

65. In this world gone mad, we will not spank the monkey, the monkey will spank US!

66. Communism is like one big phone company. If you get too rank with them, you'll wind up with a dixie cup and a thread.

67. God will not forgive us if we fail.

68. When Paul was arrested in Japan for having hash in his luggage, I thought he'd be out that night. But it became really serious stuff when he was kept in a cell. I became more fearful as the days went by.

69. At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the 'mis-de' and you just got meaner and meaner..

70. Bormann's influence on Hitler was a national disaster.

71. Do nothing till thou hast well considered the end of it.

72. Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them.

73. Death may expiate faults, but cannot repair them.

74. The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.

75. The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is - to die.

76. Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

77. I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were directly, directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never piss on a piece of stone at the fucking Alamo at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a woman's evening dress sober. I mean I know I'm a fucking crazy-ass but still.

78. The downside of being outrageous is that you have to go around explaining your fucking self to people. If you're too cocky, somebody might just pull out a fucking gun and cock it and blow your fucking face off. You gotta be really careful what you bite off. Don't bite off more than you can chew. It's a dangerous world.

79. Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

80. I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course.

81. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.

82. I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that.

83. Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.

84. Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation.

85. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

86. Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.

87. People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.

88. Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

89. White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.

90. There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are only consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence.

91. If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

92. Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

93. If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

94. I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't keep them awake nights. But the idea that the evil that men do lives after them is unsettling.

95. It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were...well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.

96. Talk had faded with the daylight. The silence that set in was oppressive. The encroaching dark, the groundmist collecting into small, curdled pools...for the first time it seemed perfectly real and totally unnatural, and he wanted either Jan or his mother, some woman, and he wondered what in the hell he was doing and how he ever could have gotten involved. He could not even kid himself that everything had not been up front, because it had been. And he hadn't even done it alone. There were currently ninety-five other fools in this parade.

97. What you buy is what you own, and sooner or later what you own will come back to you.

98. Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.

99. Every development of truths which relate to human nature, and more especially its active manifestations, is attended with a wish to see worked out in practice what theory has shown us to be just and good. To man, whose mind is seldom satisfied with the calmly beneficent influence of abstract ideas, this desire is perfectly natural, and it increases in liveliness with the spirit of benevolent sympathy in social happiness and well-being. But, however natural in itself, and however noble in its origin, this desire has not unfrequently led to hurtful consequences,-nay, often to greater evils than the colder indifference, or (as from the very opposite cause the same effect may follow) the glowing enthusiasm, which, comparatively heedless of reality, delights only in the pure beauty of ideas.

100. For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.