Unintended Repercussions Quotes

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!

Some of the worst wrongs, were caused by people who tried to change things.

What is forgotten, however, is that many times the Good we create leads to Evil that will destroy us.

I really do see the good in people, and I don't want to change that. That's really how I view things, so sometimes I'll look past a lot of huge red flags because I see something else in someone. Then, of course, it always comes back to haunt me in the long run.

No one knows whom the shoe pinches - no one.

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.

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

It is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort.

The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences.

Sometimes you don't know the effect of words until you hear it used on you.

For all the success, I never acted any differently. I've always done the same things and I can honestly say I've not changed in the slightest. Sometimes that's the problem.

Impulsive actions led to trouble, and trouble could have unpleasant consequences.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

Good fortune has side effects.

I usually destroy unreleased material. It has a way of coming back to haunt you.

I never thought for a second that anything I ever did was going to make someone cringe. That never occurred to me.

He who thinks he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit.

Without a clear picture of where the military's covert forces are operating and what they are doing, Americans may not even recognize the consequences of and blowback from our expanding secret wars as they wash over the world.

For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together - and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation.

Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray

The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be rent by the explosion.