Christopher Caldwell Quotes

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

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

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!

Some remedies are worse than the disease.

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

It is possible that a scientific discovery will be made that humans will later regret because it has awful consequences. The problem is, we probably would not know in advance and, once the discovery is made, it cannot be undiscovered.

We create monsters and then we can't control them.

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

Actions can have unintended adverse consequences.

All laws have unintended consequences.

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

Perhaps I created the monster Ramsay, who ended up as a TV personality screaming at celebrities on 'Hell's Kitchen,' doing to them what I had done to him.

I used to write things out beforehand. But sometimes it backfires.

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

I never said half the things I said.

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

There is no such thing as a harmless truth.

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.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Parties are not built by deportment.

A party is good for about 20 years. Then it runs our of money and runs out of men.

Policy remedies tend to have unfortunate side effects.

In world history man’s actions result in something quite different from what he purposes or intends.

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for hundreds of years.