Joseph Addison Quotes
The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.
Politicians and public administrators have been aware of unintended consequences for a long time.
Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English Secretary of State (Whig), Economy and Benevolence, 1794
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Burns phrase “mice an’ men” is later used as the title of John Steinbeck’s novel – Of Mice and Men, 1939.
He was reacting to the Japanese Defense of Okinawa which was failing on every front. When Japan started the war with America, its leaders were not at all convinced that they could drive America from the Pacific, but they were convinced that America would not spend the men and material to invade Japanese territory and that they would be able to negotiate a peace at some point if the price of invasion was too high. That assumption was brought into doubt.
His catastrophic failure however was when he supported the Neocon ideology that Iraq had a nuclear bomb about to be deployed and urged a preventative war invading Iraq. Not only was there no bomb ready for deployment, there was net even a nuclear research or development program to do anything nuclear.
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine. His simple prose style marked the end of the mannerisms and conventional classical images of the 17th century.
