"No one can be certain where or when the next great earthquake will occur. It is helpful to know, though, that such upheavals take place more frequently in California than in Kansas: that people who live along the San Andreas Fault should configure their houses against seismic shocks, not funnel clouds. Nobody would prudently bet, just yet, on who will play in the 2001 World Series. It seems safe enough to assume, though, that proficiency will determine which teams get there: achieving it, too, is a kind of configuring against contingencies. Not even the most capable war planner can predict where the next war will occur, or what its outcome will be. But is it equally clear that war planning should therefore cease? The point, in all of these instances, is not so much to predict the future as to prepare for it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesYale University facultyPeople from Texas
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"History, Theory, and Common Ground", International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer, 1997)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Gaddis
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Lewis Gaddis
6 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Lewis Gaddis →
Related Quotes
"The Cold War could have produced a hot war that might have ended human life on the planet. But because the fear of su…"
"Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirat…"
"Stalin's postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order."
"Learning about the past liberates the learner from oppressions earlier constructions of the past have imposed upon them."
"To judge from what he has to say about the past, he is unlikely to lose sleep over presidential abuses of power in th…"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge …"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on …"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libat…"
"The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language."
"Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a v…"