Contingency Quotes

• To ... not prepare is the greatest of crimes; to be prepared beforehand for any contingency is the greatest of virtues.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Virtue, Crime

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• By no amount of reasoning can we altogether eliminate all contingency from our world. Moreover, pure speculation alone will not enable us to get a determinate picture of the existing world. We must eliminate some of the conflicting possibilities, and this can be brought about only by experiment and observation.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Science, Our World, Conflict

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• One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.

  Randy Pausch

  Worst Case Scenario, Risk, Management

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

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• 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.

  Colin Powell

  Military, Army, Thinking

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

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• There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Peace, Future

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• And even, if circumstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.

  Frank Beddor

  Circumstances, Plans, Ifs

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• I believe that a person should take an affirmative outlook. There are always problems in life, old and new, uncertainties, and unexpected contingencies. The optimal way to deal with this is not to give up in despair, but to move ahead using the best intelligence and resources that we have to overcome adversity.

  Paul Kurtz

  Giving Up, Moving, Believe

  "Isn't Religion Weird? Quotations for Atheists". Book by Dave Lane (p. 117), August 8, 2008.

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• The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

  Heinz Pagels

  Machines, World, Clock

  Heinz R. Pagels (2012). “The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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• 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.

  John Polkinghorne

  Mean, Historical, Way

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• A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies.

  B. F. Skinner

  Self, Behavior, Given

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• It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

  Penelope Lively

  Everything Happens For A Reason, Choices, Seems

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• 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

  Destiny, Encounters, Transition

  "Alain Badiou: a life in writing". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2012.

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• You can’t control every contingency. You have to accept that. Let it scare you. Trust that it’ll be okay anyway.

  Rick Riordan

  Scare, Accepting, Okay

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• Often think of the worst-case scenario, the "Eaten By Wolves" factor.

  Randy Pausch

  Thinking, Worst Case Scenario, Cases

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

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• 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.

  Sarah Palin

  War, Enemy, Way

  Keynote Speech at the Inaugural Tea Party Convention, delivered 6 February 2010, Nashville, Tennessee

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• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Men, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.354

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• Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

  Richard Rorty

  Recognition

  Richard Rorty (1998). “Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers”, p.326, Cambridge University Press

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• 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.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Space, Decision, Soldier

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• 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

  Feelings, Intuition, Ephemeral

  Italo Calvino (1988). “Six Memos for the Next Millennium”, p.54, Harvard University Press

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• When actions are followed by events that are not causally related to the prior acts, people often erroneously perceive contingencies that do not, in fact, exist

  Albert Bandura

  People, Events, Facts

  Albert Bandura (1986). “Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory”, Prentice Hall

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• Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.

  Jonathan Raban

  Travel, Book, Journey

  Jonathan Raban (1987). “For love & money: writing, reading, travelling, 1969-1987”

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• 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.

  Hannah More

  Practice, Understanding, Sound

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• By admitting they have no contingency plan to assist the millions that may lose subsidies, the administration confirms how the misguided law is unworkable for the American people. I’m committed to working with my Republican colleagues on how Congress can respond to help those hurt by Obamacare’s broken promises.

  Orrin Hatch

  Hurt, Law, Obamacare

  "U.S. health official says no fix if Obamacare subsidies thrown out" by Yasmeen Abutaleb, www.reuters.com. February 25, 2015.

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• O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

  Walt Whitman

  Animal, Night, Self

  Walt Whitman (2013). “Song of Myself: The First Edition of 1855 + The Death Bed Edition of 1892”, p.188, e-artnow

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• Rupert Grayson manifested a talent for survival: it was said of him that even if - unlikely contingency - he had tried to drown himself in the Thames he would have been washed up alive in the Grill Room of the Savoy.

  Hugh Massingberd

  Survival, Alive, Rooms

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