Contingency Quotes - Page 2

• The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

  Alex Kozinski

  Mistake, Gun, Rights

  "Ninth Circuit Confirms a 2nd Amendment Right to Carry" by Michael James Barton, www.nationalreview.com. February 14, 2014.

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• ...for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power.  It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.  In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future.  With God all is Now.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Lying, Law, Insanity

  Edgar Allan Poe (2004). “The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.60, Wordsworth Editions

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• The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the "experimental" production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Different, Culture, Environment

  Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

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• That's all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

  B. F. Skinner

  Teaching, Behavior, Arranging

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• The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Men, Thinking, Serious

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)”, p.143, e-artnow

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• Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.

  Randy Pausch

  Attitude, Optimistic, Thinking

  Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow (2008). “The last lecture”, Hyperion Books

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• When it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table. ... That includes all elements of American power: a political effort aimed at isolating Iran, a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored, an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

  Barack Obama

  Military, Iran, Political

  "Debate: Attacking Iran, AIPAC, Israel-Palestine and Obama with Rashid Khalidi and Jonathan Tobin", www.democracynow.org. March 5, 2012.

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• Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Hands

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1988). “In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays”, p.44, Northwestern University Press

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• The denial of "self" challenges only the notion of a static self independent of body and mind-not the ordinary sense of ourself as a person distinct from everyone else. The notion of a static self is the primary obstruction to the realization of our unique potential as an individual being. By dissolving this fiction through a centered vision of the transiency, ambiguity, and contingency of experience, we are freed to create ourself anew.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Independent, Unique, Self

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• But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

  Thomas Merton

  Mistake, Ambition, Together

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• The skin is a variety of contingency: in it, through it, with it, the world and my body touch each other, the feeling and the felt, it defines their common edge. Contingency means common tangency: in it the world and the body intersect and caress each other. I do not wish to call the place in which I live a medium, I prefer to say that things mingle with each other and that I am no exception to that. I mix with the world which mixes with me. Skin intervenes between several things in the world and makes them mingle.

  Michel Serres

  Mean, Feelings, Wish

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• Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.

  Diane Ackerman

  Past, Poetry, Telescopes

  Diane Ackerman (1999). “Deep Play”, Random House Incorporated

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• What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim "You know exactly what I mean!" depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

  Will Self

  Character, Mean, Class

  "Incidents along the road" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2009.

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• Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate.

  Camille Paglia

  Fate, Political, Feminism

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.28, Canongate Books

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• We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

  Michael Shermer

  Flukes, Evolution, Quirks

  Michael Shermer (2003). “How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God”, p.706, Macmillan

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• The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.

  John Stuart Mill

  Taken, Science, Being Real

  John Stuart Mill (1858). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.200

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• [Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.

  James Madison

  Government, Games, Resources

  James Madison (1867). “1794-1815”, p.7

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• The new goddess contingency could not be erected until the God of heaven was utterly despoiled of his dominion over the sons of men, and in the room thereof a home-bred idol of self-sufficiency set up, and the world persuaded to worship it. But that the building climb no higher, let all men observe how the word of God overthrows this babylonian tower.

  John Owen

  Home, Son, Men

  John Owen (1852). “The works ...”, p.40

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• Play is a subset of voluntary behaviour involving a selective mechanism which reverses the usual contingencies of power so as to permit the subject a controllable and dialectical simulation of the moderately unmastered arousals and regulations of everyday life, in a way that is alternatively vivifying and euphoric.

  Brian Sutton-Smith

  Play, Everyday, Usual

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• There is nearly always uh, a process of wanting contingency plans made in the military.

  McGeorge Bundy

  Military, Made, Process

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• God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, "Free-will" is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces.

  Martin Luther

  Doe, Purpose, Pieces

  Martin Luther (2005). “The Bondage of the Will”, p.28, RDMc Publishing

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• If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency - so much 'security' that 'the secured' are without resources - helpless and hopeless.

  Leonard Read

  Names, Defense, Hopeless

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• Humans are wired to feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and contingency, and so we gravitate to a position after a short time even if we have no new information.

  Charles Hugh Smith

  Information, Uncomfortable, Feels

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• Those who insist that a Church program exist for every contingency and need are as much in error as their counterparts who demand that government intervene in every aspect of our lives. In both instances the ideal balance is destroyed with a resultant detriment to human progress.

  Dean L. Larsen

  Errors, Government, Balance

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• To anticipate and prevent disasterous contingencies would be the part of wisdom and patriotism.

  George Washington

  Would Be, Anticipate

  Letter to John Jay, August 15, 1786.

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