Contingency Quotes

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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, Jeffrey Zaslow (2008). “The last lecture”, Hyperion Books
  • The more a man is successful in getting out (or coming out) from his own individuality, of his egoist self, and to control (or dominate) the instincts of his physical nature, the more his character, by rising above material contingencies, widen, become free and independent.

    "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 60), 1937.
  • The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

  • A writer's work has to take account of many rhythms: Vulcan's and Mercury's, a message of urgency obtained by dint of patient and meticulous adjustments and an intuition so instantaneous that, when formulated, it acquires the finality of something that could never have been otherwise. But it is also the rhythm of time that passes with no other aim than to let feelings and thoughts settle down, mature, and shed all impatience or ephemeral contingency.

    Italo Calvino (1988). “Six Memos for the Next Millennium”, p.54, Harvard University Press
  • We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

    Michael Shermer (2003). “How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God”, p.706, Macmillan
  • 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 (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
  • The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

    Eye   Men   Law  
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.354
  • It was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.

    "Evolution as a Process". Book edited by J. S. Huxley, A. C. Hardy and E. B. Ford, 1954.
  • Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

    Richard Rorty (1998). “Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers”, p.326, Cambridge University Press
  • In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.

    Source: www.egonzehnder.com
  • And even, if circumstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.

  • McEwan's Atonement…truly dazzles, proving to be as much about the art and morality of writing as it is about the past…. The middle section of Atonement, the two vividly realized set pieces of Robbie's trek to the Channel and Briony's experiences with the wounded evacuees of Dunkirk, would alone have made an outstanding novel…. There is wonderful writing throughout as McEwan weaves his many themes — the accidents of contingency, the sins of absent fathers, class oppression — into his narrative, and in a magical love scene.

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

    Letter to John Jay, August 15, 1786.
  • There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions.

    Jodi Picoult (2014). “Sing You Home: A Novel”, p.119, Simon and Schuster
  • 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.

    Home   Son   Men  
    John Owen (1852). “The works ...”, p.40
  • The absolute contingency of the encounter takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny and that's why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

    "Alain Badiou: a life in writing". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2012.
  • It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.

    Ulysses S. Grant (2007). “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant”, p.80, Cosimo, Inc.
  • O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

    Animal   Night   Self  
    Walt Whitman (2013). “Song of Myself: The First Edition of 1855 + The Death Bed Edition of 1892”, p.188, e-artnow
  • Therefore, no matter how the world makes out in the next few centuries, a large class of readers at least will not be too surprised at anything. They will have been through it all before in fictional form, and will not be too paralyzed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.

    Class   Trying   World  
  • Once the dollar begins to collapse beneath the weight of all this new deficit spending, accumulation of contingency liabilities and the socialization of our economy, commodity prices and interest rates will head skyward.

  • New terms used like, 'overseas contingency operation' instead of the word 'war' - that reflects a worldview that is out of touch with the enemy that we face. We can't spin our way out of this threat.

    War   Enemy   Way  
    Keynote Speech at the Inaugural Tea Party Convention, delivered 6 February 2010, Nashville, Tennessee
  • Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.

    Mean   Historical   Way  
  • 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.

  • In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation should not separate the power holders from the rest.

    Ernest Gellner, John Breuilly (2008). “Nations and Nationalism”, p.1, Cornell University Press
  • The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.

    Self   Safety   Heartfelt  
    "Trauma and Recovery". Book by Judith Lewis Herman, 1992.
  • Sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action; it is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies, and providing against them.

  • Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.

    Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.69, Penguin
  • 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.

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

  • So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out.

    Real   Book   Fate  
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