If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.
In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn't get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow - and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people.
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.
I never said half the things I said.
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!
I'm constantly bumping and banging into things.
All laws have unintended consequences.
Successful parties create their own monsters.
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
I definitely know that I play the part, however big or small, in the deaths of at least two people, Chris Farley and Phil Hartmann.
We touch other people's lives simply by existing.
I never examined what I did in any great detail because I thought it would spoil things. I never read the scripts at all carefully, and never wanted to know what was going on, because I felt that being a benevolent alien that's the way it should be.
No one knows whom the shoe pinches - no one.
Most of the time, the things that really change the world exist for something fundamentally selfish and then the world-changing ends up being a side-effect of that.
Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.
If I've inadvertently become some sort of role model for failed comedians, then it's really backfired very badly on me.
try to understand that there is more thoughtlessness than malice in the world. People are not out to offend you deliberately and maliciously. But all of us are thoughtless at times and do not readily realize that our words and actions are going to hurt people.
The extreme side of my personality, which I chose to sort of display, was snowballing and getting a life of its own. It was like looking in a mirror and not recognising myself.
I think those who have impact and influence over us are often unaware.
Did I help you to a fate you didn't want?
Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.
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.
