Unexpected Consequences Quotes

Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.

If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

Some say, 'Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.' I say, 'Those who ignore history are in for a big surprise.'

If you claim to have a theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, let's see it.

One small decision, for me to get on a flight from Finland to the U.K. - I had no idea how that one small thing could just change my whole life forever.

Creative processes are always very opaque. Afterwards, you tend to pretend that everything was planned and it was a strategy, but it was not like that at all.

I can't think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they're dead.

It is so impossible to predict how much influence what you write will have, and what sorts of anxieties and imaginaries it will tap into.

The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut. You don't really know what it's about until you bite into it. And then, just when you decided it's good, you drop a big glob of jelly on your best T-shirt.

The thing about plummetting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter - if you realize it's a bad idea when you're halfway down, it's too late.

...A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

You don't realize what you're going to get, and you can't prepare yourself for it.

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

I think about terrorism in terms of popcorn. You can't tell which kernels are popcorn and which are not, but you assume you'll always have some kernels that are going to pop.

Most creative thing I've ever done? Got somebody pregnant.

I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist for cartoonists.

The only thing I think I can be accused of about paparazzi is being really naive. I didn't think about it coming along with the job and I never, during my three years at drama school, fantasized about one bit of it.

It's like aversion therapy. You keep doing scenes over and over again with three women in the bed with you, and we had to do them all in one week. Three girls would step out and another three girls would step into the bed. It sounds like a fantasy but by the end of it, I just wanted to go for a hike on my own in the north of England, in the hills. Because it became a sort of "be careful what you wish for" kinda thing.

The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney." ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone. And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that.

Predictability can lead to failure.

If you wait too long in Vegas, you end up with a chicken finger in your underwear.

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child.

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign.