quotations about cause and effect
You must not think that because one thing happens after another thing, then it is the first thing that causes the second thing. You must not think that, because it might not be true.
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine
If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, that a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them.
DAVID HUME
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion
Once effect is created, cause will follow.
AMIT RAY
Peace on the Earth
The law of cause and effect is like the great big cosmic kitchen where you place your order and pretty soon your meal arrives.
CATHERINE WISHART
Teen Goddess: How to Look, Love & Live Like a Goddess
No incident, however seemingly trivial, is unimportant in the scheme of things. One event leads to another, which triggers something else and before you know where you are, the ramifications spread far and wide throughout History. Echoing down the ages. Getting fainter and fainter, but never completely dying away. They talk of The Harmony of the Spheres, but History is A Symphony of Echoes. Every little action has huge consequences. They're not always apparent, and sometimes, in our game, sometimes effect comes before cause, not after. It makes your head ache.
JODI TAYLOR
A Symphony of Echoes
But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Certain things just go together. And when they do, they are correlated. It is the darling of all human errors to assume, without proper testing, that one is the cause of the other.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Flight Behavior
Reasoning about causes and effects is a very difficult thing, and I believe the only judge of that can be God. We are already hard put to establish a relationship between such an obvious effect as a charred tree and the lightning bolt that set fire to it, so to trace sometimes endless chains of causes and effects seems to me as foolish as trying to build a tower that will touch the sky.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
Cause and effect is like a series of dominoes stood on end and spaced closely enough that one falling naturally knocks over the next. Several years ago, much public attention was focused on people who would set up thousands of such dominoes and make them drop in an impressive chain reaction. Such arrangements would branch and converge in creative patterns, often several times, between the first and last dominoes. Often it would take these dominoes 15 minutes or more to fall, but the chain reaction would be the inevitable result of tipping a single domino at the beginning.
H. WILLIAM DETTMER
Breaking the Constraints to World-class Performance
At the conjuror's, we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties cause and effect.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
I wanted to stop forever in that pause between cause and effect. A place where I didn't have to be responsible for everybody all of the time.
JO FURNISS
All the Little Children
Everything that happens has a cause, which same cause has itself a cause. It is a chain stretching into the most distant past, and forged by necessity, inclination, bitter memories, the urge of duty. Nothing happens without a reason. Predicting the future does not require predestination ... it only requires a world where one thing will most likely lead to another.
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Salute the Dark