Quotes · Skopia

6 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Unintended consequences✕clear

Philosophical literature

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The Life of the Mind · 1975

★ 1.9

Novel · Detective fiction

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul · 1988

★ 1.9

Political literature · Economic literature

There is an invisible hand in politics that operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market. In politics, individuals who seek to promote only the public good are led by an invisible hand to promote special interests that it was no part of their intention to promote.

Milton Friedman

1983

★ 2.6

There is scarcely a single man sufficiently aware to know all the evil he does.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

1678

★ 3.5

O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott

1808

★ 6.9

Economic literature

Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security... and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 7.2