A Quote by Peter Ackroyd

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

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Accident Chance Confusion Consequences Course English English History History Me Pattern Real Seems Sometimes Unintended Unintended Consequences Whole

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Peter Ackroyd
British - Novelist
Born: October 5, 1949

The flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by actors, and these unintended consequences also may form unacknowledged conditions of actions in a feedback fashion. Human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project; it persistently eludes efforts to bring it under conscious direction.

Anthony Giddens

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

Niall Ferguson

Each money-printing exercise brings about unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are higher inflation rates than had no money been printed.

Marc Faber

Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.

James Nicoll

All history is the history of unintended consequences.

T. J. Jackson Lears

My experience in government is there is a whole host of unintended consequences you have to think through. I can't un-know that, I find it harder now to offer simple solutions.

Jo Swinson

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

The course of history as a whole is no object of experience; history has no eidos, because the course of history extends into the unknown future.

Eric Voegelin

In the preface to his great History of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher wrote: "Men wiser than and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave ..." It seems to me that the same is true of the much older [geological stratigraphical] history of Europe.

D. V. Ager

There is a real danger of unintended consequences, of encouraging people to give up. Pessimism, if it becomes a habit, can reinforce a narrative of unstoppable decline. If there is nothing we can do, that releases us from our obligations.

David Grinspoon

Because one does not want to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, he establishes a pattern of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationships to man. He then becomes a slave to the pattern and takes the pattern to be the real thing.

Bruce Lee

English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent.

Guy Pearce

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

In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.

Neil MacGregor

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

George Orwell

History teaches us that many breakthroughs were happy accidents. Whether that's penicillin coming from Fleming neglecting to clean his laboratory before going on vacation or the team at Odeon trying a little side project that allowed people to communicate in real time as long as their message was 140 characters or less (which ultimately of course became Twitter), the unintended is often the transformational.

Scott D. Anthony

A Quote by Peter Ackroyd

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