Piers Anthony Quotes

Things always become obvious after the fact

Any damn fool can predict the past.

I've always been careful never to predict anything that had not already happened.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

There has to be certainty and there has to be clarity. There can't be ambiguity, .. This has to be certain, clear in all respects from all the parties so nobody is in any doubt about what the future holds.

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

When something is staring you in the face in your life and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within your heart only a fool doesn't believe it to be true.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

There is always a reason. When I look back on things that really upset me at the moment, I can always see why it happened in retrospect.

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .

The past is only the future with the lights on

When you have answers, when everything has a reason, when it makes sense to an analytical person, you're going to be more successful. You're going to be more comfortable.

We're hoping to succeed; we're okay with failure. We just don't want to land in between.

In the future there cannot be room for ambiguity. They have to make their position absolutely clear before they can expect anyone to respond to it.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

Doubt is long-winded. Certainty is brief.

He knew the things that were and the things that would be and the things that had been before.

A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

You can't argue with math, Carter. You'll always lose.

What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.