For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. — Viktor E. Frankl
He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention — Adam Smith
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results. — Joseph Sobran
Conservatives tend to be very skeptical of change. When something could be improved, they often get in the way of those improvements because they fear the unintended consequence perhaps more than they should. — Bret Weinstein
The truth is women use contraception not only as a way to prevent unintended pregnancies, but also to improve their health and the health of their families. Increased access to contraception is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality. — Felicity Huffman
Everything you are going through is preparing you for eveyrthing you asked for.
The only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction-that same-sex couples and their children don't need marriage because same-sex couples can't produce children, intended or unintended-is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously. — Richard Posner
He came to help her with her eyeliner and blinded her. — Moroccan Proverbs
But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence. — Aaron Sorkin
Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place. — Margaret J. Wheatley
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. — Maximilien Robespierre
The predominant thought or the mental attitude is the magnet, and the law is that like attracts like, consequently, the mental attitude will invariably attract such conditions as correspond to its nature. — Charles F. Haanel
When trust is broken, sorry means nothing.
Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. — Noam Chomsky
Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences. — Murray Rothbard
Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment. — Nikola Tesla
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
On this showing, the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole. — Arnold J. Toynbee
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature. — Voltaire
All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws. — Pierre-Simon Laplace
Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future. — Gottfried Leibniz
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. — Anthony Giddens
Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions. — Ludwig von Mises
Globalization is not a monolithic force but an evolving set of consequences - some good, some bad and some unintended. It is the new reality. — John B. Larson
If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences. — Fareed Zakaria
The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history. — Niall Ferguson
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. — Edward Snowden
The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is. And when anger is the boss, you get unintended consequences. — Jeanne DuPrau
parenting is an exercise in unintended consequences. — Stacy Schiff
Unintended consequences get to the heart of why you never really understand an adaptive problem until you have solved it. Problems morph and "solutions" often point to deeper problems. In social life, as in nature, we are walking on a trampoline. Every inroad reconfigures the environment we tread on. — Richard Pascale
I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. — Steve Jobs
There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. — Steve Jobs
In the US, we consider our foreign policy as something rooted in the protection of American ideals of democracy and human development. However, we often fail to see the damaging consequences, many of which may be unintended, on others - including Christians - living in other parts of the world. — Ed McBain
[Hillary] Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS. — Bernie Sanders
The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public's trust in the IPCC. — Judith Curry
Clearly there are always unintended consequences of any legislative or regulatory act that's taken in the heat of battle. — Richard Grasso
Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself. — Viktor E. Frankl
It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences. — Ian Tattersall
Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates. — Tim Walberg
The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. — Steve Jobs
Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away. — Tyler Cowen
The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences. — Ann Druyan
For many years, people would say, "Only child? Must have been terrible," and I wanted to say, "You are mentally ill, because it was the greatest." You got all the attention. You never had to share anything. No one ever ate your food. No one ever took your toys. But the unintended consequence was that I didn't appreciate that being universally loved was not only not required for happiness, but also not possible. — John Hodgman
We often say that someone has exceptional political or social savvy, but what specific cognitive skills allow these people to handle interpersonal situations so effectively? Typically, socially skilled people are exceptional at recognizing underlying agendas, anticipating the probable effects and likely unintended consequences of a chosen course of action. These specific capabilities determine one's "people smarts." — Justin Menkes
The initial 18th-, 19th-century intention was to give the less-educated lower classes a way to move up into this new, rising middle class, to enable them to fit in. So our view of language as being class-based is an unintended consequence of the drive to help educate rising businessmen. — Kory Stamper
I do think that I have a better sense of how military action can result in unintended consequences. — Barack Obama
We could solve this problem of a divided vote, or an unintended consequence of your vote, to a voting system which uses your name, where I am right now, they've got it on the ballot for a statewide referendum which enables people to. — Jill Stein
I'm just worried about the unintended consequences of the laws. — Mary Katharine Ham
Any prediction worth its weigh would consider the spiritual, material, and unintended consequences of introducing a new technology to the world. It would proceed from the kind of understanding Chellis articulated: Life is Whole. — Stephanie Mills
All history is the history of unintended consequences. — T. J. Jackson Lears
What I have learned from studying counterfactual history is that the law of unintended consequences always kicks in no matter how secure you are in your plan. We have to live with the historical record as it is, like it or not. — Gavriel David Rosenfeld
God always saves the world from the consequences of unintended errors of men who live in fear of Him. — Mahatma Gandhi
Even limited military actions end up carrying with them great costs and unintended consequences. — Barack Obama
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern. — Peter Ackroyd
But the consequences of the whole-hearted and uncritical embrace of politics by Christians has been, IN EFFECT, to reduce Christian faith to a political ideology and various Christian denominations and para-church organizations as special interest groups. The political engagement of the various Christian groups is certainly legal, but in ways that are undoubtedly unintended, it has also been counterproductive of the ends to which they aspire. — James Davison Hunter
Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences. — James Nicoll
In Conclusion
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