Accidents Quotes - Page 6

• Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is a part of nature.

  Herbert Spencer

  Progress

  'Social Statics' (1850) pt. 1, ch. 2, 4

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• Deep, persistent problems are never solved by accident; they are solved only by people who are obsessed with them and set out to solve them directly.

  Lee Smolin

  People, Problem, Obsessed

  Lee Smolin (2007). “The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next”, p.314, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable. ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube.

  Myla Goldberg

  Morning, Nice, Home

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• And I had worked at the comic-book store almost by accident, because I was deciding to make a living as an artist, be it as an art tutor or illustrator, and that's how I wanted to make my living.

  Brian Michael Bendis

  Art, Book, Comic

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. August 9, 2007.

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• That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, School, Choices

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• Significant inventions are not mere accidents. The erroneous view [that they are] is widely held, and it is one that the scientific and technical community, unfortunately, has done little to dispel. Happenstance usually plays a part, to be sure, but there is much more to invention than the popular notion of a bolt out of the blue. Knowledge in depth and in breadth are virtual prerequisites. Unless the mind is thoroughly charge beforehand, the proverbial spark of genius, if it should manifest itself, probably will find nothing to ignite.

  Paul Flory

  Blue, Views, Play

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• A lot happens by accident in poetry.

  Howard Nemerov

  Happens

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• With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Self Confidence, Balance, Should

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.86, Princeton University Press

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• The three heads of God were sundered from existence. Who shall say that this was accident? And likewise, who shall say that accidents be not but arabesques within some wider figure? Of this nothing is known.

  Austin Osman Spare

  Three, Figures, Existence

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• Communities and neighborhoods are affected. Idling trains, traffic backups, grade crossing accidents and other safety issues all affect the quality of life in our neighborhoods.

  Bill Lipinski

  Issues, Safety, Community

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• An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or one's radio set will seldom make it work better.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Watches, Radio, Sticks

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• You can't exceed the system with language.  You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better.  You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate...  You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind.  And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur.  In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator.

  Jacque Fresco

  People, Design, Events

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• Men of success meet with tragedy. It was the will of God that I won the Olympics, and it was the will of God that I met with my accident. I accepted those victories as I accept this tragedy. I have to accept both circumstances as facts of life and live happily.

  Abebe Bikila

  Men, Victory, Tragedy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Running, Thinking, People

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• More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Leader, Together, Grit

  Warren G. Bennis, Patricia Ward Biederman (2009). “The Essential Bennis”, p.206, John Wiley & Sons

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• Some people said, “we don't want to risk astronauts lives anymore, we need to stop doing this”. The astronauts don't feel that wayWe fly for our country, we fly for humanity, we fly for exploration, we fly for a variety of reasons, and we don't stop flying because we have accidents.

  Eileen Collins

  Country, Patriotic, People

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• War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.

  A. J. Muste

  War, Outcomes, Way

  "Our Generation Against Nuclear War". Book by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos, 1983.

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• What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

  George Santayana

  Men, Historical, Language

  The Life of Reason vol. 3, ch. 1 (1905)

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• As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

  Freeman Dyson

  Together, Looks, Benefits

  Freeman Dyson (2013). “FROM EROS TO GAIA”, p.166, Pantheon

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• A relationship is sent by God and accident.

  Fiona Shaw

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death or accident results from witchcraft. What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Struggle, Sky, Punishment

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.149, Macmillan

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• People really don't like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either. If you use better data, you can find better values; there are always market inefficiencies to exploit, and so on. But it has a broader and less practical message: don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation.

  Michael Lewis

  Successful, People, Luck

  "MICHAEL LEWIS: Successful People Like Me Were Actually Just Really Lucky" by Julia La Roche, www.businessinsider.com. June 05, 2012.

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• The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.

  Chauncey Wright

  Science, Men, Causes

  Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.141, A&C Black

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• Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident, and rawness.

  Martin Puryear

  Ideas, Rawness, Chance

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• Luck is an accident that happens to the competent.

  Albert M. Greenfield

  Luck, Happens, Competent

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