David Hume Quotes

[Black Mirror] is always about unforeseen consequences and unforeseen problems, it's not usually that someone's created a machine that they want to enslave mankind with, it's someone's invented a new kind of... paperweight that enslaves mankind.

Success sometimes can really bite you in the shorts.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

Policy remedies tend to have unfortunate side effects.

Actions can have unintended adverse consequences.

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

The cure can be worse than the illness

A think may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.

Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.

There is much said about the wickedness of doing evil that good may come. Alas! there is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.

I would include non-medical sex selection as one of those practices that I think is morally questionable and that can carry adverse social consequences.

In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called 'social justice' might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society. Such a conception of justice seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or by social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise.

Danger is a side effect of what I do, not the reason behind it.

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.

Manipulations of opinion, insofar as they are inspired by well-defined interests, have limited goals; their effect, however, if they happen to touch upon an issue of authentic concern, is no longer subject to their control and may easily produce consequences they never foresaw or intended.

Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.

Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.

It's hard to hear that your good intentions are making things worse and tragic.

There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on - after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail.

Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.

I may be a burglar...but I'm an honest one, I hope, more or less.

Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones.