Jay Asher Quotes

Actions can have unintended adverse consequences.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.

You never know when you are doing something that is affecting someone.

Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we force them.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

Success sometimes can really bite you in the shorts.

The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.

Every person's every action has an effect.

Inevitably, these sorts of things are going to come back to blow up in people's faces.

Everything is a reaction.

The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.

Unintended Consequences

Inarritu's films focus on the repercussions of a single act that draws people together and simultaneously throws their lives into chaos.

Ramifications of small decisions can be pretty large.

History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence—that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane.

practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

One little ripple started today could create a typhoon fifteen years from now.

Yes, I do believe that there is a cause and effect and a ripple effect upon everything everybody does, and they have positive consequences and negative consequences. If you start to focus on the kind of minutia of that, it's really quite extraordinary.

Everything we do affects other people.

There's a domino effect with certain things you say.

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.