“Look, it was an accident. Five thousand accidents happen every day -- bizarre, tragic, farcical… they're Acts of God fit only to amaze the survivors and irritate the Insurance Company…”

A Zed and Two Noughts

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Peter Greenaway 266
British film director 1942

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“Are animals like car-crashes -- Acts of God or mere Accidents -- bizarre, tragic, farcical, plotted nowadays into a scenario by an ingenious storyteller, Mr C Darwin?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the introduction to the published script.
A Zed and Two Noughts

“Think of the federal government as a gigantic insurance company (with a sideline business in national defense and homeland security), which does its accounting on a cash basis, only counting premiums and payouts as they go in and out the door. An insurance company with cash accounting... is an accident waiting to happen.”

Peter R. Fisher (1956) American treasury official

While under secretary of the U.S. Treasury in 2002; frequently short-handed as "an insurance company with an army." A Fiscal Train Wreck, Paul, Krugman, Paul Krugman, March 11, 2003, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/opinion/a-fiscal-train-wreck.html,
How government is like insurance, June 28, 2011, Thomas F., Schaller, Baltimore Sun http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-06-28/news/bs-ed-schaller-20110628_1_unemployment-insurance-premiums-government-insurance,
Who First Said the US is 'An Insurance Company with an Army'?, Economist's View, Mark, Thoma, January 17, 2013 http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/01/who-first-said-the-us-is-an-insurance-company-with-an-army.html,

“I have an accident about every two years, and one day it won't be an accident!”

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“Things happen to people by accident.”

Source: A Little Princess

“This means that if in a city seven accidents occur each week, then (assuming that all possible distributions are equally likely) practically all weeks will contain days with two or more accidents, and on the average only one week out of 165 will show a uniform distribution of one accident per day.”

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“We are accidents waiting
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“Marriage was something I thought happened only to other people, like fatal traffic accidents.”

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 289).

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