Unforeseen Quotes - Page 3

• There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

  Learned Hand

  Mean, Trying, Way

  "Giuseppe v. Walling". Judicial opinion, 1944.

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• But [in bureaucracies], too, decision making takes place in a world full of unceratinties. Any actual system of information processing, planning and control will never be optimal but merely practical, applying rote responses to recurrent problems and employing a variety of contingency tactics to deal with unforeseen events.

  Manuel De Landa

  Information Processing, Decision, Events

  Manuel De Landa (1997). “A thousand years of nonlinear history”, Zone Books (NY)

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• The more the climate is forced to change, the more likely it is to hit some unforeseen threshold that can trigger quite fast, surprising and perhaps unpleasant changes.

  Richard Alley

  Climate, Triggers, Threshold

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• I have always attached great importance to the manner in which an experiment is set up and conducted ... the experiment should be set up to open as many windows as possible on the unforeseen.

  Frederic Joliot-Curie

  Science, Important, Window

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• Astronomy may be revolutionized more than any other field of science by observations from above the atmosphere. Study of the planets, the Sun, the stars, and the rarified matter in space should all be profoundly influenced by measurements from balloons, rockets, probes and satellites. ... In a new adventure of discovery no one can foretell what will be found, and it is probably safe to predict that the most important new discovery that will be made with flying telescopes will be quite unexpected and unforeseen.

  Lyman Spitzer

  Stars, Adventure, Science

  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 17, No. 5, p. 191, 194, May 1961.

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• The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought.

  George Gissing

  Truth, Honesty, Soul

  George Gissing (2016). “The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft”, p.148, The Floating Press

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• To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Morning, Giving, Waiting

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

  Ann Patchett

  Fate, Doors, Long

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• At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different.

  Arthur Rubinstein

  Making Love, Risk, Different

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• Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

  Hannah Arendt

  Children, Responsibility, Our World

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• Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar

  Marshall McLuhan

  Design, Patriotism, Typography

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• I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.

  Margaret Atwood

  Girl, Boys, Awkward

  Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

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• There's no use diversifying into unknown companies just for the sake of diversity. A foolish diversity is the hobgoblin of small investors. That said, it isn't safe to own just one stock, because in spite of your best efforts, the one you choose might be the victim of unforeseen circumstances. In small portfolios, I'd be comfortable owning between three and ten stocks.

  Peter Lynch

  Best Effort, Diversity, Three

  Peter Lynch (2012). “One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

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• ...there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, People, Missing

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• At a certain point in history monuments became associated with kitsch, (it had never previously been so) and one might well ask why this unforeseen aesthetic and ethnic debasement of their values came about, or why monuments have not adapted to the times. Perhaps, instead of evoking authentic religious, patriotic or mystical sentiments, they evoke only the customary ersatz for these sentiments and have suffered the fate of becoming sentimental.

  Gillo Dorfles

  Religious, Patriotic, Fate

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• People call me stupid for treating you like a queen, but I dont even worry `cause you`re my unforeseen.And I hope that you`ll be with me, if only in my dreams. But here you are next to me and you`re glad, or so it seems.

  Alexander Rybak

  Dream, Queens, Stupid

  Song: Funny Little World, Album: Fairytales, 2009

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• Serendipity is the way to make discoveries, by accident but also by sagacity, of things one is not in quest of. Based on experience, knowledge, it is the creative exploitation of the unforeseen.

  Adrian Bejan

  Discovery, Creative, Serendipity

  "Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics". Book by Adrian Bejan and Gilbert W. Merkx, 2007.

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• Every affliction tests our will, showing whether it is inclined to good or evil. That is why an unforeseen affliction is called a test, because it enables a man to test his hidden desires.

  Marcus Eremita

  Christian, Men, Evil

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• We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)

  John Holdren

  War, Ocean, Optimistic

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• I tend to worry about each "emergency" or unforeseen complication on all my projects. But there are so many! All of life is unforeseen! So I am learning that is the cycle of life - everything is cyclical and temporary and to get ok with that someday could be my greatest achievement.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  Cycle Of Life, Worry, Achievement

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• This is the evolutionary value of play- play makes us flexible. By reinterpreting reality and begetting novelty, we keep from becoming rigid. Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Reality, Play, Identity

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.43, Penguin

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• Unforeseen surprises are the rule in science, not the exception. Remember: Stuff happens.

  Leonard Susskind

  Stuff Happens, Remember, Surprise

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• Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.

  George Will

  Believe, Erosion, People

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• Without imagination of the one kind or of the other, mortal existence is indeed a dreary and prosaic business... Illumined by the imagination, our life, whatever its defeats - is a never-ending unforeseen strangeness and adventure and mystery.

  Walter de La Mare

  Adventure, Imagination, Kind

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• Human ability is an unequal match for the violent and unforeseen vicissitudes of the world.

  Hugh Blair

  World, Violent, Vicissitudes

  Hugh Blair (1827). “Sermons ... To which is prefixed, a short account of the life and character of the author, by James Finlayson ... A new edition, etc. With a portrait”, p.17

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