“We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”

— Carl Sandburg

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Carl Sandburg 62

American writer and editor 1878–1967

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 184; this also has been quoted as "What happens once will never happen again. But what happens twice will surely happen a third time."

“On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen…”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

“Nothing happens for the first time, especially if what you’re trying to do is to invent something absolutely novel and unprecedented. Of course, if nothing happens for the first time, that leaves the apparent problem of how anything happens at all. But the difficulty is entirely semantic: in the eternal recurrence of subatomic configurations of which our world is a simulacrum, there is no question of beginnings or endings. There are only middles, continuations, repetitions. Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (pp. 14-15)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Context: If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don’t hurt it. Not even major surgery if it’s done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.