For Want of a Nail/Quotes

"For the want of a marker
"The doctors lost their place
"For the want of a cutline
"They couldn't lift his face
"For the want of a facelift
"His ratings dropped
"Then the Sitcom folded

"Then the network flopped"—The Newsboys, "It's All Who you Know"

"Well, you see, that's another reason I can't help you catch this guy. I might adversely affect the fate of the future. I mean, his next victim might be the mother of the daughter whose son invents the time machine. Then the son goes back in time and changes world history and then Columbus never discovers America, man never lands on the moon, the U.S. never invades Grenada. Or something less significant resulting in the fact that my father never meets my mother and consequently, I'm never born. So when do we start?"

—Clyde Bruckman, The X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

"You don't have to change much to change everything."

—Mark Rosewater

And the Bastard grant us, in our direst need, the smallest gifts:
the nail of the horseshoe,
the pin of the axle,
the feather at the pivot point,
the pebble at the mountain's peak,
the kiss in despair,
the one right word.
In darkness,

understanding.

—Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold.

"Should a traveler appear earlier in the timeline of his own existence, he would be but as a pebble, cast upon still water... but the ripples he creates would over time radiate upon far distant shores, geometrically altering events in its path."

—Einstein, Farscape

"The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did NOT fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is, or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda...going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never led the away-team on Milika III to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's bridge when its captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe...and he never, EVER got noticed by ANYONE."

—Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation

One wrong risk, one misplaced trust, one careless guess is enough to destroy the one thing you can least afford to lose.

—Bella, narrating, Luminosity

Tim: did you notice that everything that transpired in those three films - and I mean everything - can be attributed to the actions of one very minor character?

Brian: Who's that?

Tim: The gunner on the star destroyer at the beginning of the first film.

Brian: What do you mean?

Tim: Because, if the gunner had shot the pod that C-3P0 and R2 were in, they wouldn't have got to Tatooine, they wouldn't have met Luke, Luke wouldn't have met Ben, they wouldn't have met Han and Chewie, they wouldn't have rescued Princess Leia. None of it would have happened.

—Spaced S-1 Ep. 5, Chaos