"One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected"
About this Quote
Augustine’s line is a neat little trapdoor: it sounds like a paradox, then lands as management doctrine. The first clause flatters our faith in control. If something is “expected,” we like to believe it’s therefore containable: you can budget for it, engineer around it, write the checklist, run the drill. “The expected can be prevented” is the voice of systems-thinking optimism, the worldview of aerospace and large organizations where failure isn’t fate, it’s process.
Then he flips it. “The unexpected should have been expected” is the cynic’s corrective, aimed at the executive habit of treating surprise as exoneration. In Augustine’s universe, “unexpected” often means “we didn’t bother to model the tail risks,” or “we assumed best-case because worst-case was politically inconvenient.” The line indicts institutional denial: the incentive structures that reward smooth narratives over messy preparedness, and that punish the person who keeps raising ugly possibilities.
What makes the quote work is how it weaponizes the word “expected” against itself. It exposes expectation as both prediction and responsibility. If you can imagine a category of failure, you’re already accountable for not preparing for it. The humor is dry, almost bureaucratic, but the subtext is sharp: surprises aren’t random; they’re often the compound interest of ignored warnings.
Contextually, Augustine’s career in high-stakes engineering and defense culture helps. In those worlds, “unknown unknowns” are rarely mystical. They’re the predictable result of complexity, tight coupling, and overconfidence. The sentence reads like a post-mortem in advance: don’t brag about being shocked when shock is the most reliable feature of the system.
Then he flips it. “The unexpected should have been expected” is the cynic’s corrective, aimed at the executive habit of treating surprise as exoneration. In Augustine’s universe, “unexpected” often means “we didn’t bother to model the tail risks,” or “we assumed best-case because worst-case was politically inconvenient.” The line indicts institutional denial: the incentive structures that reward smooth narratives over messy preparedness, and that punish the person who keeps raising ugly possibilities.
What makes the quote work is how it weaponizes the word “expected” against itself. It exposes expectation as both prediction and responsibility. If you can imagine a category of failure, you’re already accountable for not preparing for it. The humor is dry, almost bureaucratic, but the subtext is sharp: surprises aren’t random; they’re often the compound interest of ignored warnings.
Contextually, Augustine’s career in high-stakes engineering and defense culture helps. In those worlds, “unknown unknowns” are rarely mystical. They’re the predictable result of complexity, tight coupling, and overconfidence. The sentence reads like a post-mortem in advance: don’t brag about being shocked when shock is the most reliable feature of the system.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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