Foreseen Quotes - Page 2

• The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.

  Robert J. Havighurst

  Light, People, Identity

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• Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.

  Octave Chanute

  Distance, Airplane, Successful

  Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

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• He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Long, Littles, Sat

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.874, Pan Macmillan

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• We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.

  Primo Levi

  Events, Fundamentals, Unexpected

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• Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Night, Light

  Marcel Proust (2008). “The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half”, p.33, Lulu.com

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• A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo's side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice. "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Heart, Voice, Long

  The Fellowship of the Ring bk. 2, ch. 2 (1954)

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• Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Cities, Mind

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• There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Differences, Economist, Accounts

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• At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near." 'Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Grief, Long, People

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• No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Reality, Missing, Details

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• Where does a story truly begin? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet there are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Fate, Cutting, Events

  Nicholas Sparks (2011). “A Bend In The Road”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Life, Fall, Kissing

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• Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

  George Sand

  Queens, Powerful, Writing

  George Sand “Les ëuvres Choisies de George Sand. The Selected Works of George Sand”, Library of Alexandria

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• The future of nations cannot be frozen . . . cannot be foreseen. If we are going to accomplish anything in our time we must approach our problem in the knowledge that there is nothing rigid or immutable in human affairs. History is a story of growth, decay and change. If no provision, no allowance is made for change by peaceful means, it will come anyway - and with violence.

  Herbert Hoover

  Peace, Future, Mean

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• That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen . . . . It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.

  James Madison

  Errors, Government, Sides

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.204

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• What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Respect, Government, Order

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• It's cool to be a nerd. There's a general understanding that smartphones didn't come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that's now ubiquitous.

  J. J. Abrams

  Success, White, Smartphones

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• I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

  Mary Schmich

  Mother, Sibling, Grief

  Mary Schmich (2012). “The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Chicago Tribune's Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary”, p.28, Agate Digital

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• The purpose of God is the sovereign cause of all that good that is in man, and of all that external, internal and eternal good that comes to man. Not works past, for men are chosen from everlasting; not works present, for Jacob was loved and chosen before he was born; nor works foreseen, for men were all corrupt in Adam. All a believer's present happiness, and all his future happiness springs from the eternal purpose of God.

  Thomas Brooks

  Spring, Past, Men

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• Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.

  Freya Stark

  Pain, Sorrow, Causes

  Freya Stark (2013). “Perseus In The Wind: A Life of Travel”, p.124, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Memories, Opportunity, Men

  FaceBook post by Gabriel García Márquez from Jun 16, 2013

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• Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

  Henri Poincare

  Powerful, Science, Law

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• The Deluge: A punishment inflicted on the human race by an all-knowing God, who, through not having foreseen the wickedness of men, repented of having made them, and drowned them once for all to make them better - an act which, as we all know, was accompanied by the greatest success.

  Voltaire

  Men, Knowing, Race

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• In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Loss, Government, Times Like These

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.44, Modern Library

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• A lot of Democrats have said that raising the minimum wage is both good economics and good politics. The nonpartisan CBO issued a report today saying that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost the economy about 500,000 jobs...Why should we trust Democrats on anything when they couldn't have foreseen that this would be the case?

  S. E. Cupp

  Money, Jobs, Work

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