Michael O'Rielly Quotes

Some remedies are worse than the disease.

Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards.

Just because there is a problem doesn't mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment.

We have to be careful about creating more rules.

The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

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

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

A fool throws a stone into a well, and it requires a hundred wise men to get it out again.

The law of unintended consequences, far more than the Constitution, is what governs the modern presidency.

Good intentions rarely make good policy.

Hardly any man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

Of the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy,"--if this should alarm any reader,--I can see no risk or possibility in England.

Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.

When you pass legislation, it is not tied to a particular problem. It can have unintended consequences.

There is no such thing as wise regulation of a generally acknowledged evil.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws

You need to fix it, Mr. Dudley, or we will get someone who will.

There is no question that the federal government sometimes overdoes it in issuing rules and regulations.

What one has created by regulation, one could address by regulation.

You do something when you're 20, and you're still paying for it when you're 40.

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.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

"Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?" [asked the Red Queen] Alice considered. "The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it-and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me-and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!" "Then you think nothing would remain?" said the Red Queen. "I think that's the answer." "Wrong, as usual," said the Red Queen, "the dog's temper would remain."

Intentions don't matter. It's the end result we're all judged by. Evil in the name of good is still evil. And when you dance with the devil, you seldom get to pick the tune.