Miscalculations Quotes

• War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Peace, War, Military

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• But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.

  Jeannette Walls

  Matter, Tiny, Planning

  Jeannette Walls (2010). “Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.

  Rene Daumal

  Cutting, Men, Errors

  "The Lie of the Truth (Volume 2)". Book by Rene Daumal, 1938.

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• People often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal.

  Michael Howard

  Government, Law, People

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• Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.

  John F. Kerry

  Real, Wmd, Mass Destruction

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• The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price.

  Benjamin Graham

  Safety, Investing, Higher

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

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• For a man to think he can fulfil his destiny without a woman is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation; it is reckless and folly. Certainly a woman is not everthing, but everything depends on her.

  Yasmina Khadra

  Destiny, Men, Thinking

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• President Bush had an opportunity tonight to say, 'Look ... things aren't going very well in Iraq and we did make some miscalculations and misjudgments there,' but he is so stubbornly arrogant - he just sticks with that same formula that he has in talking about the war on Iraq that just defies the reality that we all see on the ground.

  Mike McCurry

  War, Opportunity, Reality

  "Debating the first debate" by Dan Lothian, Dana Bash, John King, Candy Crowley Richard Shumate and Ed Payne, edition.cnn.com. October 3, 2004.

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• I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.

  John Green

  Made

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.17, Penguin

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• The embassy in Cairo put out a statement after their grounds had been breached. ... An apology for America's values is never the right course. ... The statement that came from the administration was - was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a - a severe miscalculation.

  Mitt Romney

  Stupid, Apology, Thinking

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• Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated...to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter. There can be no doubt that these warnings reached Cairo. One thing was now clear. If Nasser imposed a blockade, the explosion would ensue not from 'miscalculation', but from an open-eyed and conscious readiness for war.

  Abba Eban

  War, Doubt, Cairo

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• A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!

  Rick Yancey

  Discipline, Mind, Action

  Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

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• If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he'd feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own face and the face of others. The person capable of that would be permitted anything.

  Vladimir Bartol

  People, Joy, Would Be

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• The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ambition, Errors, Suffering

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.19

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• We need to be skeptical of utopianists who offer unreliable totalistic visions of other worlds and strive to take us there. We need some ideals, but we also need to protect ourselves from the miscalculations and misadventures of visionaries.

  Paul Kurtz

  Other Worlds, Vision, Atheism

  Paul Kurtz (1992). “The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge”

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• Politicians and bureaucrats are substituting their uninformed, largely political decisions for those of the marketplace. Their past miscalculations demonstrate that they do not and cannot possess the information, knowledge, means, and discipline to manage the economy.

  Mark Levin

  Mean, Past, Information Knowledge

  Mark R. Levin (2009). “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Coyness is a rather comically pathetic fault, a miscalculation in which, by trying to veil the ego, we let it appear stark naked.

  Louis Kronenberger

  Ego, Trying, Naked

  Louis Kronenberger (1964). “The cart and the horse”

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• You don't have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger - where they can't afford to be second to strike - the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high.

  Dennis A. Ross

  Country, War, Communication

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• There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over- or under valued, who couldn't?

  Michael Lewis

  Baseball, Player, Television

  "Moneyball". Book by Michael Lewis, June 17, 2003.

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• Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom. Long experience in sociological disputes leads me to expect that a great many people will take offense at the disclosure of this miscalculation. It makes the highest demands on people's will to veracity; it puts a heavy burden on everyday living; it places all social responsibility on those who work, be it in the factory, in the office, on the farm, in the laboratory, or wherever.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Responsibility, Long, People

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.

  John F. Kerry

  Real, Wmd, Mass Destruction

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• I would say that among my many huge emotional miscalculations was my taking a film career for granted. It is the most awesome privilege to be able to use one's imagination and wit, physicality and musicality, conscious brain and unconscious instinct in the service of a work that has a chance to move and excite and amuse and delight people all over the world, including long after we're dead. What a noble calling! And I felt it was just there for me as a kind of given, some sort of inherited birthright-when in reality it's the most magnificent luxury.

  Robert Downey, Jr.

  Moving, Emotional, Reality

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• Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

  Robin Cook

  Agency, Occupation, Als

  "The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means" by Robin Cook, www.theguardian.com. July 8, 2005.

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• The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Nuclear Disarmament, Nukes

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

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• Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Nuclear Disarmament, Nuclear Proliferation

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

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