“It's all well and good to look back after the fact and see what we should have done, but we rarely know what path is best when we take that first step.”

— Christine Feehan

Source: Oceans of Fire

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Christine Feehan 47

American writer

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“To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

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Context: It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another. Without falling into a mystical vitalism that reverences organic nature as sacred, we can at least try rather to serve than to subdue the prancing seas of life. With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do.

“One must know what is right and wrong and what is good and what is bad and what should be done and what should not be done. As well as manners, we must force our hearts to always be in good morals.”

Ananda Mahidol (1925–1946) eighth monarch of Siam from the Chakri dynasty as Rama VIII

Source: "Speech while conferring degree certificates to the graduating students of Chulalongkorn University" http://www.memohall.chula.ac.th/article/%E0%B8%81/ (13 April 1946)

“As the years pass, and we look back on something which, at the time, seemed unbelievably discouraging and unfair, we come to realize that, after all, God was at all times on our side. The eventual outcome was, we discover, by far the best solution for us, and what we thought should have been to our best advantage, would in reality have been quite detrimental.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

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“The best we can do is to know the approach, the means, we can utilize for dealing with the unclear path to a new desired condition, not what the content and steps of our actions—the solutions—will be.”

Mike Rother (1958) American business academic

“We must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first step towards the Path, need either know or recognize these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

“It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.”

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“We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.”

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“‘Mandatory’ means forced—at gunpoint, if necessary. When we force people to do things, for their own good or the good of others, we violate their right of self-determination. Libertarians respect the rights of others to choose their own path—that’s what liberty is all about. If community service is such a good deal, we should have no trouble persuading people to do it voluntarily. If we can’t convince others that our way is best, maybe we should humbly consider the possibility that it isn’t.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 199

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Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

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“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

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