Accidents Quotes

The exaggerated faith in small samples is only one example of a more general illusion - we pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than the data justify. Jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality. Statistics produce many observations that appear to beg for causal explanations but do not lend themselves to such explanations. Many facts of the world are due to chance, including accidents of sampling. Causal explanations of chance events are inevitably wrong. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Whilst accidents and assaults injure and kill people quickly and spectacularly, bullying and consequent prolonged negative stress injure and kill people slowly and secretively. The outcome, though, is the same. ~ Tim Field

I'm a professional bodyguard. (Leta)
Yeah, right. (Aiden)
Nope. All true. I know seventy-two ways to kill a man and sixty-nine of them look like an accident. (Leta) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I got into the movies by accident. When I got an offer, I thought, 'Let's try this, too.' Everything in my life has happened by trial and error. I didn't even think I would win the Miss India title, so where's the question of thinking I'd come this far. ~ Priyanka Chopra

Dena seemed about to respond, but instead, she belched again, a smaller belch that seemed unequal as a harbinger to the monstrous chunky gush that erupted from inside her. I held her hair back and looked away as she finished retching. Working with children had made me less squeamish
they were constantly presenting their grubby hands to your, having accidents
but at some point, disgusting was still disgusting, Especially with an adult woman. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a person to make money. It's nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start, you make money, and you go on ... But you've got to begin ... You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in. Once you've done that, you can't help it! ~ D.H. Lawrence

Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram, all these companies are businesses first, but, as a close second, they're demographers of unprecedented reach, thoroughness, and importance. Practically as an accident, digital data can now show us how we fight, how we love, how we age, who we are, and how we're changing. All we have to do is look: ~ Christian Rudder

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that no one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. - Goethe, by attribution ~ Gregory Maguire

I had teeth that stuck out so far, I used to eat other kids' candy bars by accident. ~ Rita Rudner

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Photography's history is bound to the mistake, to the accident. ~ Taryn Simon

So easy to go sailing off this road. A wonder more folks didn't. All that space, waiting. ~ S.M. Hulse

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. ~ Aldous Huxley

But there are no real accidents, only decisions that feel like accidents, one after another, that take you down a certain road and take on a momentum that can't be reversed. ~ Nichole Bernier

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide. ~ Larry Elder

Nothing is or can be accidental with God. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents - the rest you let float by. ~ David Wroblewski

Don't be a scaredy-human," called Emerald. "Gran-Doyen says I can't burn you up, so I won't." Then under her breath, she added, "Though accidents do happen." (Emerald to Ethan) ~ Jackie Castle

We had a few tragic accidents in our state, as they've had in every state, from train crashes on down. And really, no text is worth dying for; that is our message to young people. And this is such a new phenomenon when you look at the number of texts and how they've increased exponentially in just the last few years. ~ Amy Klobuchar

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason; that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents ~ Michel De Montaigne

But everyone likes dogs," Cassandra protested.
"I don't dislike dogs. I just don't want one in my house."
"Our house." She braced her elbows on the table and massaged her temples. "I've always had dogs. Pandora and I couldn't have survived our childhood without Napoleon and Josephine. If cleanliness is what worries you, I'll make certain the dog is bathed often, and accidents will be disposed of right away."
That drew a grimace from him. "I don't want there to be accidents in the first place. Besides, you'll have more than enough to keep you busy- you won't have time for a pet."
"I need a dog."
Tom held the propelling pencil between his first and second fingers, and flipped it back and forth to make the ends tap on the table. "Let's look at this logically- you don't really need a dog. You're not a shepherd or a rat catcher. Household dogs serve no useful purpose."
"They fetch things," Cassandra pointed out.
"You'll have an entire staff of servants to fetch anything you want."
"I want a companion who'll go on walks with me, and sit on my lap while I pet him."
"You'll have me for that."
Cassandra pointed to the contract. "Dog," she insisted. "I'm afraid it's nonnegotiable. ~ Lisa Kleypas

His life had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We were happy a hundred years ago. We knew that there were exploiters and exploited, wealthy and poor, and we had a perfect idea of how to get rid of injustice; we would expropriate the owners and turn the wealth over to the common good. We expropriated the owners and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history. And we keep repeating that in principle everything was all right, only some unfortunate accidents slipped in and slightly spoiled the good idea. Now let us start afresh ... ~ Leszek Kolakowski

Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one's advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance. ~ Jodi Picoult

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history. ~ Martin Cruz Smith

If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath - our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us. ~ Wayne Muller

There are no mistakes, just happy accidents. ~ Bob Ross

Although no definite reason for the accident has been established, modifications are being embodied to cover every possibility that imagination has suggested as a likely cause of the disaster. When these modifications are completed and have been satisfactorily flight tested, the Board sees no reason why passenger services should not be resumed. ~ John Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon Of Tara

My big concern is keeping people off the highways today, so that we have no further accidents ~ Jim Hodges

My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized I had been loved by people he didn't even recognize. His heart filled up, warm again as it had not been in what seemed so long to him- save small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son.

~pgs 209-210; Buckley, Lindsey and Jack on Susie ~ Alice Sebold

God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood. ~ Michael Crichton

Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The accidents of history are everywhere. The carnage all around us. ~ Sari Wilson

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

It's no accident that new ideas pop into our heads when we least expect it. In our enthusiasm to be productive, we forget to give our mind/body moments to be "receptive" - that is, open to daydreaming, open to letting our minds wander. ~ Linda Stone

Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I sometimes feel my entire life is a series of accidents and chances- not that I am complaining. One can be very happy having relinquished all expectation of control. ~ Kate Morton

There is an ambush everywhere from the army of accidents; therefore the rider of life runs with loosened reins. ~ Hafez

In his theory Perrow recognized that modern systems are made up of thousands of parts, including fallible human decision makers, which interrelate in ways that are, like Laplace´s atoms, impossible to track and anticipate individually. Yet one can bet on the fact that just as atoms executing a drunkard´s walk will eventually get somewhere, so too will accidents eventually occur. Called normal accident theory, Perrow´s doctrine describes how that happens – how accidents can occur without clear causes, without those glaring errors and incompetent villains sought by corporate or government commission. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

The United Nations has estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings a year, almost all in the Muslim world. But that estimate appears too low, because so many of the executions are disguised as accidents or suicides. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Whether through the patterns left in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere, pointing us to the unlived portion of our lives. When we think we are in charge, the lessons dissolve as accidents or coincidence. But when we're humble enough to welcome the connections, the glass that breaks across the room is offering us direction, giving us a clue to the story we are in. ~ Mark Nepo

I think I started to approach time in a different way after the accident. Before I was more willing to give my time to people and things that I wasn't as interested in because somehow I allowed myself to be brainwashed into being forced to work with other people or on other projects that I had no interest in. So simply, the accident gave me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do. ~ Kanye West

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful. ~ Howard Nemerov

I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.'
My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.
'I was too young, and we were always told that they'd put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up. ~ Emily Andrews

I like to windsurf and ski, and most of all I love to ride horses. The wilder and faster the better! If I'm presented with a fast horse or a fast boat, I still get that shiver of excitement and I cannot resist. Luckily I never seem to have any accidents, and thank God for that. ~ Andrea Bocelli

You'll learn more from your accidents than anything that you could ever learn at school. ~ Billy Joel

I'm saying that storms happen - cancer happens. Accidents happen. We can either run from them, hide from them, or....go through them. God is with us in all of those situations. But yeah, some of his best people are pressed out, shaken, fermented...aged through circumstances or time. ~ Susan May Warren

The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them: We have to abide their outcome in the dark. ~ Thucydides

Also, if you have an accident, you can't start to dance again at the top, you're too weak; you start with the easy things - the way you did them when you were young, and come up up up, the way you did then. ~ Ninette De Valois

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect. ~ Clay Shirky

Accidents happen. I will, um ... I will pay to have your house rebuilt."
"And my barn?" a woman called out.
Liam sighed. "Yes, and your barn, too."
"And my golden carousel?" shouted another man. "Will you pay for that?"
Liam raised an eyebrow. "The giant smashed your golden carousel?"
"No," said the man. "I'd just like to have a golden carousel. ~ Christopher Healy

Leaders live by choice, not by accident. ~ Mark Gorman

The most numerous accidents bear on the digestive system; it is easy to establish anorexias of various kinds, troubles of deglutition, spasms of oesophagus at various heights, vomitings; then intestinal phenomena - diarrhoeas, as well as constipations, distensions of the abdomen, paralyses, or sphincter-spasms, troubles of the same nature in the emission and even in the secretion of the urine, etc. ~ Anonymous

My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey. ~ Franz Kafka

I don't think there's any accidents in my life. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus

Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain. ~ Anthony Trollope

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue. ~ Melina Marchetta

The disaster in the Gulf was no accident. It was the result of years of oil money buying off politicians to lead to an unregulated and ill focused addiction to oil and drilling. The doomed fate of the local fisherman and the environment were foretold in the infamous chants of 'Drill, Baby, Drill.' ~ Robert Greenwald

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families. ~ Charles Dickens

In the era of networks only, I cannot tell you the number of shows that we don't know about that did not survive. They got canceled. But there are a few that survived by accident, because they didn't have anything else to do, and they stayed with it. ~ Henry Blodget

In so many millennia, the humans never did figurs love out. How much is physical, how much in the mind? How much accident and how much fate? Why did perfect matches crumble and impossible couples thrive? I dont know the answer better than they did. Love simply is where it is. ~ Stephenie Meyer

It was like passing the scene of a highway accident and being relieved to learn that nobody had been seriously injured. ~ Martin Cruz Smith

Nothing happens without intention, Willem. Nothing. This theory of yours - life is rules by accidents - isn't that just one huge excuse for passivity? ~ Gayle Forman

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious"? I believe that the world has never seen - and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distateful exertion, the world will never see - that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I'm not going to try and change your mind."
"If you're here, you accept it's my choice. This is the first thing I've been in control of since the accident."
"I know."
And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak ... ~ Jojo Moyes

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. ~ William James

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Who would seriously want to listen to anything emanating from a quasi-chimpanzee's irrational bundle of mental accidents and energies? ~ David A. Noebel

Readers tend to tolerate such "accidents" ... when they get the characters into trouble but they're less accepting when the author uses them to rescue people. The "deus ex machina" ... in one stroke it renders meaningless all the efforts of the cast. ~ Thomas McCormack

All great discoveries," the elder Marratta had once said, "are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents." At ~ Mark Helprin

Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times - letting pass infinite other examples - a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to have it near oneself, to honor his house with it, and to be able to have it imitated by those who delight in that art, and how the latter then strive with all industry to represent it in all their works; and seeing, on the other hand, that the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired than imitated - indeed they are so much shunned by everyone in every least thing that no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us - I can do no other than marvel and grieve… From this it arises that the infinite number who read [the histories] take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained within them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible - as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity. Wishing, therefore, to turn men from this error, I have judged it necessary to write on all those books of Titus Livy... ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

There are no accidents; success is the result of doing the right thing, in the right way, over and over. ~ Brian Tracy

Not many people can lay claim to having broken Time, and we did it purely by accident. ~ James A. Owen

Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents takes place. For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal ~ John Berger

I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down ... The other accident is Diego. ~ Frida Kahlo

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all things there stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of wantonness". ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The beauty of some women has days and seasons, depending upon accidents which diminish or increase it; nay, the very passions of the mind naturally improve or impair it, and very often utterly destroy it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced: the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, but small addition. It considereth causes of diseases, with the occasions or impulsions; the diseases themselves, with the accidents; and the cures, with the preservation. ~ Francis Bacon

By education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim & a Hindu only by accident of birth. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

There are certain things that come along that take precedence over all other events, like natural catastrophes, car accidents, and unexpected meetings with rockstars. These things suck you entirely and leave no room for you to wonder how bored or worried other people might be while you are so completely engaged. ~ Dakota Lane

What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment. ~ Friedrich Schiller

There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents. ~ John Polkinghorne

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you. ~ Muhammad Ali

As for the military advantage of such a bombardment, I simply cannot grasp it. I have seen housewives disemboweled, children mutilated; I have seen the old itinerant market crone sponge from her treasure the brains with which they were spattered. I have seen a janitor's wife come out of her cellar and douse the sullied pavement with a bucket of water, and I am still unable to understand what part these humble slaughterhouse accidents play in warfare. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I was born a human but this was an accident of fate ... since childhood I've been captivated by the study of robots and cyborgs. Now I'm in a position where I can actually become one. ~ Kevin Warwick

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls. ~ Max Planck

I never know what to tell young people when they come here. It could never happen for anyone they way it happened for me. It was all an accident. ~ Al Hirschfeld

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints. ~ Bobby McFerrin

The self-driving car is coming. And right now, our best supply of organs come from car accidents ... Once we have self-driving cars, we can actually reduce the number of accidents, but the next problem then would be organ replacement. ~ Bre Pettis

Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents. ~ Jeff Beck

I might act like it's an accident but the opposite is true. I'm incredibly calculated when it comes to my career. ~ Eva Mendes

I used to be a Catholic, and when I first started police work, I worried about that. I saw a lot of people dead or dying for no apparent reason . . . not people I killed, just people. Little kids who'd drowned, people dying in auto accidents and with heart attacks and strokes. I saw a lineman burn to death, up on a pole, little bits and pieces, and nobody could help . . . . I watched them go, screaming and crying and sometimes just lying there with their tongues stuck out, heaving, with all the screaming and hollering from friends and relatives . . . and I never saw anyone looking beyond. I think, Michael, I think they just blink out. That's all. I think they go where the words on a computer screen go, when you turn it off. One minute they exist, maybe they're even profound, maybe the result of a great deal of work. The next . . . . Whiff. Gone. ~ John Sandford

Decrements in attention and concentration, being able to learn more efficiently, that's just not as good. Also, there are motor vehicle accidents, workplace accidents, we see that a lot. ~ Shelby Harris

The names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1.Temperance. Eat not do dullness; drink not to elevation.
2.Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3.Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4.Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5.Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6.Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7.Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8.Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9.Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10.Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloths, or habitation.
11.Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12.Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13.Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. ~ Benjamin Franklin

All men are our brothers. As far as the discovery of the truth is concerned, they are all working for the same purpose; they may be separated by the accidents of space and time, and by the exigencies of race, religion, nationality, and other groupings; from the point of view of eternity they are working together. ~ George Sarton

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate. ~ Olympia Brown

It is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared-for, on this dark, cooling star: but even so
and all the more
what marvelous creatures we are! What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is
blind or not
a good world to live in, a promising universe. ~ Clarence Day Jr.