Top 100 Unintended Quotes
#1. Secret ops by secret forces have a nasty tendency to produce unintended, unforeseen, and completely disastrous consequences. New Yorkers will remember well the end result of clandestine U.S. support for Islamic militants against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s: 9/11.
Nick Turse
#2. Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.
James Nicoll
#3. You're human. It's one of the things humans do. Lies just spring out, even unbidden and unintended.
C.J. Brightley
#4. Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.
Stone Gossard
#5. War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.
Joseph Sobran
#7. Her unintended striptease was all the more sensual because Belle was lowering her stocking with agonizing slowness not because she had an audience but because she seemed to love the feel of the silk sliding along her soft skin.
Julia Quinn
#8. Success cannot be pursued; success ensues. It flows as the unintended byproduct of efforts concentrated in the direction of a worthy cause.
Robin S. Sharma
#9. Any resemblance to the names and characters of actual persons is entirely coincidental and unintended, unless you think otherwise.
K. Ceakou
#10. Lawmakers who interfere with commerce and the normal creation of jobs in an economy run the risk of doing harm rather than good. Unintended consequences from regulating or legislating to achieve a goal can occur and cause havoc in the markets or an economy.
Mark Skousen
#11. What I have learned from studying counterfactual history is that the law of unintended consequences always kicks in no matter how secure you are in your plan. We have to live with the historical record as it is, like it or not.
Gavriel David Rosenfeld
#12. The reason I am so negative about the Federal Reserve's policies is that they only target core inflation and argue that they can't identify bubbles, but when each bubble bursts, they flood the system with liquidity that brings about unintended consequences.
Marc Faber
#13. The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived.
Dennis C. Blair
#14. I do try to let what is obviously unintended yet naturally good stay in.
George Murray
#15. An 'unintended pregnancy' could be a wonderful surprise, not planned but welcome. Why should the government be in the business of 'preventing' a surprising but welcome pregnancy
Wendy Wright
#16. Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing like a trip to the dressing room to convince a woman - fat, thin, or in between - that she's a freak.
Virginia Postrel
#17. It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern.
Peter Ackroyd
#18. The only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction-that same-sex couples and their children don't need marriage because same-sex couples can't produce children, intended or unintended-is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously ...
Richard Posner
#19. He recognized it and knew it. In others - clients, witnesses, or sometimes adversaries, he had seen or heard it: A gesture, a phrase, or a tone which exposed unintended truth in the beat of a second.
Jackson Burnett
#20. The multiple failures of top-down design, and the omnipresence of unintended consequences, can be attributed in large part, to the absence of relevant information.
Cass R. Sunstein
#21. [Hillary] Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.
Bernie Sanders
#22. The truth is women use contraception not only as a way to prevent unintended pregnancies, but also to improve their health and the health of their families. Increased access to contraception is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality.
Felicity Huffman
#23. Contraceptives have a proven track record of enhancing the health of women and children, preventing unintended pregnancy, and reducing the need for abortion.
Louise Slaughter
#25. He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me.
Coco J. Ginger
#26. Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.
Eric Holder
#27. Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.
Margaret J. Wheatley
#28. We need different perspectives here in Washington - someone who has private-sector experience, somebody who's actually created jobs, manufactures products, understands the incentives and disincentives, the intended and unintended consequences of legislation.
Ron Johnson
#29. At heart, I would have to say I'm a pantser. I fully embrace the chaos of letting the unintended happen, on life and on the page.
Margaret Stohl
#30. The only thing about sanctions is that, like a lot of drone strikes, there are countless unintended victims. Cutting off aid to Uganda only increases the pain there.
Henry Rollins
#31. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.
Steve Jobs
#32. The reality is that every time we manipulate nature's rhythms, we create unintended consequences that then require us to make still further changes."
~ Glenn Aparicio Parry
Glenn Aparicio Parry
#33. The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public's trust in the IPCC.
Judith Curry
#34. The contribution of the Western democracies to the awakening of the East has been indirect and certainly unintended. They have kindled an enthusiasm of resentment against the West; and it is this anti-Western fervor which is at present rousing the Orient from its stagnation of centuries.2
Eric Hoffer
#35. This was Greater Los Angeles in an age of change, crackling with the energy of doom, yearning for the Apocalypse, where an unintended slight or an inadvertent trespass on someone else's turf might result in a thermonuclear response.
Dean Koontz
#36. It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.
Henry Petroski
#37. New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities, because the risk is that if you don't do that - and you want to lead the world - then you might end up getting unintended consequences.
John Key
#38. It is ... highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Ian Tattersall
#39. Think about rethinking what you're thinking, before speaking the thought you were thinking, and cause unintended consequences for speaking what you probably shouldn't have been thinking.
T.F. Hodge
#40. There is no question but that when one is engaged militarily that there are going to be unintended loss of life.
Donald Rumsfeld
#41. A double standard, albeit unintended, violates our integrity and damages our credibility. In a global society, conflict is rarely the fault of only one party.
Karen Armstrong
#42. We believe in funding family planning because it helps to prevent unintended pregnancy. We believe that a woman considering an abortion should not be forced to have an ultrasound against her will.
Nancy Keenan
#43. I thought there might be some grand design I did not understand, but the government's policy clearly was not working, because India was still poor. I was determined to learn more, so I became interested in economics. This book is another unintended consequence of the government's policies.
Raghuram G. Rajan
#45. But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.
Aaron Sorkin
#46. I just think everything we do has an unintended consequence. We take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Iraq was the check against Iran.
Gary Johnson
#47. We cannot ignore the meaning of mad cow. It is one more warning about unintended consequences, about human arrogance and the blind worship of science.
Eric Schlosser
#48. Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that's never my intent. That's an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call 'ripping yarns.'
Raymond E. Feist
#49. The research suggests that praise may have [a negative, unintended] effect, directing attention away from the task [at hand] and toward your reaction.
Alfie Kohn
#50. Lucretius was passionate, and much more in need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He committed suicide, and appears to have suffered from periodic insanity - brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the unintended effects of a love philtre.
Lucretius
#51. If they are opposed to abortion, they should be for preventing unintended pregnancies.
Louise Slaughter
#52. His struggle to mold me in his image had been successful after all. The old walrus in fact managed to instill in me a great and burning ambition; it had simply found expression in an unintended pursuit. He never understood that the Devils Thumb was the same as medical school, only different.
Jon Krakauer
#53. Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#54. I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.
Linus Torvalds
#55. I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
Michael Crichton
#56. There's an unintended consequence when it comes to drone attacks in Yemen. Yeah, you take out the al-Qaida stronghold, but you also wipe out the other half of the block. That makes Yemenis against the United States for the rest of their lives and all their descendants.
Gary Johnson
#57. Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason.
Constance Hale
#58. We must always be careful of the actions we take, for there are always unintended consequences. Sometimes they are serendipitous, other times they are appalling, but those consequences are always there. We must tread lightly in this world ... until we are sure of foot.
Neal Shusterman
#59. Any prediction worth its weigh would consider the spiritual, material, and unintended consequences of introducing a new technology to the world. It would proceed from the kind of understanding Chellis articulated: Life is Whole.
Stephanie Mills
#60. The point is, the "best" technology or idea doesn't always prevail. Sometimes chance and the law of unintended consequences win out.
Eric Weiner
#61. If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.
Fareed Zakaria
#62. Fate has to do with events in history that are the summary and unintended results of innumerable decisions of innumerable men.
C. Wright Mills
#63. Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions ...
Ludwig Von Mises
#64. In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#65. Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue ... as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#66. Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality.
Steve Allen
#67. Parenting is an exercise in unintended consequences.
Stacy Schiff
#68. Word Powers:
A beautiful bitch has four legs, not two. Even terms of, so called, endearment have unintended manifestations. Guard your grill.
T.F. Hodge
#69. The internet is the most complex system that humans have ever invented. And with every internet enabled operation that we've seen so far, all of these offensive operations, we see knock on effects. We see unintended consequences.
Edward Snowden
#70. Clearly there are always unintended consequences of any legislative or regulatory act that's taken in the heat of battle.
Richard Grasso
#71. Photographs freed from the scientific bias can, and indeed usually do, have double meanings, implied meanings, unintended meanings, can hint and insinuate, and may even mean the opposite of what they apparently mean.
Peter C Bunnell
#72. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
Viktor E. Frankl
#73. Even limited military actions end up carrying with them great costs and unintended consequences.
Barack Obama
#74. Each money-printing exercise brings about unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are higher inflation rates than had no money been printed.
Marc Faber
#75. Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.
Tim Walberg
#76. We have a lot of talented people in this Congress, and we can avoid a lot of unintended consequences if we just included them.
Dan Webster
#77. The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is. And when anger is the boss, you get unintended consequences.
Jeanne DuPrau
#78. One of the unintended negative consequences of online advertising has been the loss of value in traditional classifieds. It's simply quicker, simply easier for an end user who's online, on a broadband connection, to look things up and to figure out what they want to buy.
Eric Schmidt
#80. In today's world more harm may be done by well-intentioned people trying to do good, who are unaware of the unintended consequences of their actions, than by people actually trying to cause harm.
Peter Coleman
#81. The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment - the way it always was, Crake would have said - and the doctrine of unintended consequences is in full spate.
Margaret Atwood
#82. The best lessons I've been taught is that you should definitely have a plan. Try to imagine yourself six months in advance, and always save your money. Because there are always going to be unintended expenses that are going to come up. Surprises always happen.
K. Guillory
#83. Globalization is not a monolithic force but an evolving set of consequences - some good, some bad and some unintended. It is the new reality.
John B. Larson
#84. Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away.
Tyler Cowen
#85. The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.
Richard Schickel
#86. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
Margaret J. Wheatley
#87. Unintended consequences, he thought miserably.
He was angry at his anger, the way it surged up
and took over.
Jeanne DuPrau
#88. Even the most well-meaning
government policies have unintended consequences that have harmed
the economy. If government policies were today held accountable the way
private businesses are, the scoreboard would say government is failing
to help people ... and this is a fact.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
#89. Most music culture these days runs on systems and networks devised to deal with the aftermath of thermonuclear war. Music culture has a habit of using these moods and machines in creative, unintended ways.
Kode9
#90. Today's residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.
Richard Rothstein
#91. I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.
Madeleine Albright
#92. Government interventions create unintended consequences that lead to calls for further intervention, and so on into a destructive spiral of more and more government control.
Ron Paul
#93. God always saves the world from the consequences of unintended errors of men who live in fear of Him.
Mahatma Gandhi
#94. The problem with unintended consequences isn't with the consequences, it's with the unintended. Just because you didn't' intend for something to happen doesn't mean you didn't want it to.
Charles Yu
#95. There is no elegance in hate, but there is tremendous beauty in the unintended revenge of living well and being happy.
Victoria Malin Gregory
#96. I don't know of any army that does more than an Israeli army does to avoid civilian casualties. But incidental and unintended casualties accompany every war.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#97. Many people recognize that technology often comes with unintended and undesirable side effects.
Leon Kass
#98. This sound self-serving, but being interested in everything makes you a more effective opportunist - and that's what an editor has to be, a student of unintended consequences.
Terry McDonell
#99. I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions, misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate our world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder.
David Maraniss
#100. I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.
Thomas Jefferson
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