Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 12 “Agent” section 4, p. 226
“Events,” I say to the Captain, “events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.”
Source: Beyond Apollo (1972), Chapter 60
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Barry N. Malzberg 4
American novelist, short story writer 1939Related quotes
Informal remarks, University of Pennsylvania Law School. http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/2000s/Selected-from-Remarks-Penn-Law-092206.html, 2006
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
1860s, "If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)
Context: In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.
“John Norris: Vegetarian Testimonial,” video ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (26 August 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LnCbT3ayvM.
Source: Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom (1994, with Edward Esko), p. 63
Quoted in Remembrance by Tom Johnson (September 1987)