It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events.
--
Autobiographical sketch (1970), at Nobelprize.orgAleksandr Solzhenitsyn
» Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - all quotes »
Berkeley, as we have seen, thinks that there are logical reasons proving that only minds and mental events can exist. This view, on other grounds, is also held by Hegel and his followers. I believe this to be a complete mistake. Such a statement as “there was a time before life existed on this planet,” whether true or false, cannot be condemned on grounds of logic, any more than “there are multiplication sums which no one will have ever worked out.” To be observed, or to be a percept, is merely to have effects of certain kinds, and there is no logical reason why all events should have effects of these kinds.
George Berkely
The future is about emotion: reactions to events are usually far more important than the events themselves.
Patrick Dixon
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
All that I can hope to make you understand
Is only events: not what has happened.
And people to whom nothing has ever happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events.Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot
There's a major pattern of energy in universe wherein the very large events, earthquakes, and so forth, occur in any one area of universe very much less frequently than do the small energy events. Around the Earth insects occur more often than do earthquakes. In the patterning of total evolutionary events, there comes a time, once in a while, amongst the myriad of low energy events, when a large energy event transpires and is so disturbing that with their general adaptability lost, the ultra-specialized creatures perish.
Buckminster Fuller
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
Sombart, Nicolaus
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z