“Sooner or later usually means too late”

Source: A Civil Campaign

"Contribution to a Contribution" as quoted in The Twin Bedside Anthology (1946) by Charles Lee, p. 183

A Slave is a Slave (1962)
Context: Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

Sad Beautiful Tragic
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

On the Irrepressible Conflict (1858)
Context: The Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results.
Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.

Source: These Strange Ashes

Third Lecture, Critical Discussion of the Foundations of Probability, p. 74
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Source: Wishful Drinking