Contingency Quotes

God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, “Free-will” is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces.

Certainly, I know what to do, and when I am Vice President — and I will be — there will be contingency plans under different sets of situations and I tell you what, I’m not going to go out and hold a news conference about it. I’m going to put it in a safe and keep it there! Does that answer your question?

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

There is nearly always uh, a process of wanting contingency plans made in the military.

That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projecting meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation.

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

When you see John Boehner crying, believe you me, it’s because he cannot control, uh, that wild contingency called the Tea Party.

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

…she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism.

If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency – so much ‘security’ that ‘the secured’ are without resources – helpless and hopeless.

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

A wise man, when he writes a book, sets forth his arguments fully and clearly; an enlightened ruler, when he makes his laws, sees to it that every contingency is provided for in detail.

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

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence – gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim “You know exactly what I mean!” depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

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.

Leibniz believed in freedom, both divine and human, and he thought that contingency was a necessary condition of freedom. That is, if an agent A acts freely when choosing X, then A’s choosing X cannot be necessary. But there are some elements in his philosophy that seem to make contingency impossible.

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

It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.

I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.

A good portfolio is more than a long list of good stocks and bonds. It is a balanced whole, providing the investor with protections and opportunities with respect to a wide range of contingencies.

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

Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it — and a greater fool if you count upon it.

We will build a Marine Corps based on 36 battalions, which the Heritage Foundation notes is the minimum needed to deal with major contingencies. Right now we only have 23.

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.

That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.

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.

There are so many things I can’t believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I’ll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don’t have contingencies and conditions.

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.

Those who insist that a Church program exist for every contingency and need are as much in error as their counterparts who demand that government intervene in every aspect of our lives. In both instances the ideal balance is destroyed with a resultant detriment to human progress.

Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.

History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

Once the dollar begins to collapse beneath the weight of all this new deficit spending, accumulation of contingency liabilities and the socialization of our economy, commodity prices and interest rates will head skyward.

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.

We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.

It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact.

The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the “experimental” production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.

[Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.

Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films.

There is certainly a strong game development community in Texas, centered around Austin, with a significant additional contingency coming over from Dallas.

The war on terror, rebranded under Obama as the “Overseas Contingency Operation,” has morphed into war on democracy.

Presidents and Lyndon Johnson was really no exception, very rapidly learned the difference between a contingency plan and an authorized act.

McIntosh is persuasive in his arguments that the scientific facts of evolution cannot stand alone … science shows that historical evolution, whatever its contingencies, is itself on a trajectory of values development. McIntosh has well-researched his sources and integrated them with seminal insight.

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.