Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher Quotes

He [the historian] should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Nothing is inevitable in history.

… history turns out as always to be too messy, contingent and subject to the vagaries of human agency to be slotted into neat boxes.

History is only very rarely the story of inevitabilities,” he says, “and it almost never appears in that form to its participants.

There are no inevitabilities in history

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.

Random chance plays a huge part in everybody's life.

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

History is totally unpredictable.

History throws you what it throws you, and you never know what’s coming.

How fragile and unpredictable the course of history is.

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

Accidents rule men, not men accidents.

Historians emphasize contingency, complexity, and the unanticipated ... Few principles apply all the time.

Human affairs are governed by such a variety of whimsical circumstances, that we should always be prepared to stand the shock of that disappointment which the best concerted measures are constantly subject to.

Don't be surprised at Fortune's turns and twists: That wheel has spun a thousand yarns before.

History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.

Fate occasionally touches us all in ways we don't always understand.

If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours.

It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.