Frederic Bastiat Quotes

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.

Every action we have is going to have repercussions in ways we could not anticipate.

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.

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

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Unintended Consequences

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

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.

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.

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.

Every person's every action has an effect.

Our actions - and inaction - touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.

Things always happen in series.

I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.

Everything is a reaction.

There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

Everything we do, even the slightest thing we do, can have a ripple effect and repercussions that emanate. If you throw a pebble into the water on one side of the ocean, it can create a tidal wave on the other side.

What happened yesterday affects today; what happens today will affect tomorrow/

In the fabric of human events, one thing leads to another. Every mistake is in a sense the product of all the mistakes that have gone before it, from which fact it derives a sort of cosmic forgiveness; and at the same time every mistake is in a sense the determinant of all the mistakes of the future, from which it derives a sort of cosmic unforgivableness.

... you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

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

Nothing in life is without cause and effect. Nothing is merely a shell. Everything has some motive.

You cannot go through life without cause and effect.

I've always been drawn to the idea that small choices in our lives could have drastic effects on our future.