“Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”

— Barack Obama

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)
Context: Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 30, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath." by Barack Obama?

Barack Obama 1158

44th President of the United States of America 1961

Related quotes

“Sometimes really, really bad things happen to people, and there is no explanation and no reason whatsoever.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

“The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner
Context: The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.

“Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as "right to work."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. It is supported by Southern segregationists who are trying to keep us from achieving our civil rights and our right of equal job opportunity. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.

Speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

“We speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)
Context: We speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world. The peoples of Africa are compelled to endure the fact that on the African continent the superiority of one race over another remains official policy, and that in the name of this racial superiority murder is committed with impunity. Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?

“Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist, simple things.
"Good" and "bad" are simple things. You bomb me = "bad." I bomb you = "good."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Simple people(who,incidentally,run this socalled world)know this(they know everything)whereas complex people—people who feel something—are very,very ignorant and really don't know anything.
"Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)