Looking for inspirational quotes about the butterfly effect? We have rounded up the best collection of butterfly effect quotes, sayings, captions, (with images and pictures) to inspire you how small actions can have a domino effect on bigger results.
What Is Butterfly Effect?
The butterfly effect is an idea from chaos theory. The butterfly effect is the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.
A small change can sometimes make much bigger changes happen. One small incident may have a big impact on the future. The emphasis here is on the words may and can. There is no general theory that tells us what is going to happen.
Also See: Ripple Effect Quotes
This was coined by one Edward Lorenz almost 45 years ago during the 139th meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science. It would prove to be very popular and has been embraced by popular culture ever since.
“If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.” – Edward Lorenz. 1972 Paper
In the movie The Butterfly Effect, actor Ashton Kutchner plays a man who has found a way to travel back in time to his youth.
Also See: Embrace Change Quotes
Each time he returns to his childhood, he makes minuscule changes that radically alter his life in the present, inevitably leading to shocking results.
These quotes are inspirational and will throw light on how are actions really matter in the larger realm of things. The butterfly effect theory is a metaphor and can be symbolically used in love, life, psychology, and everyday life how a single positive or negative thought can vibrate on a very high level and make great impact on our life.
Best Butterfly Effect Quotes
- “Everything affects everything.”
- “Don’t count the days; Make the days count.” – Muhammad Ali
- “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn
- “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “You can’t change who people are without destroying who they were.”
- “Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect.” – The 48 Laws Of Power
- “I am a believer of butterfly effect. A small positive vibration can change the entire cosmos.” – Amit Ray
quotes about the butterfly effect
- “Would it make a difference if I told you that no one could possibly ever love anyone as much as I love you?”
- “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
butterfly effect quote
- “The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can effect climate climate changes on the other side of the planet.” – Paul Erlich
- “Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result.” – Kevin Michel
- “We can’t stay here. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act.” – Andy Andrews
- “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things… I am tempted to think… There are no little things.”
- “You have been created in order that you might make a difference. You have within you the power to change the world.” – Andy Andrews
- “Sensitivity on initial condition’s means that starting the pendulum in a slightly different position would cause drastically different behavior.”
- “It’s time to transform into the butterfly you were meant to be, love yourself enough to develop wings, to become a creature of beauty.” – Unknown
- “It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.” – Chaos Theory
- “The flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Ever wondered how something so small can be a reason for a chaos.”
- “I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.” – William Stafford
- “Some things must remain the same in order for the universe to flow properly. One pebble dashed out across the ocean leaves a lifetime of ripples. They call it the butterfly effect.” – Louise Mullins
- “Why is our consciousness portraying us as monsters? Looking in the mirror that reflects faults. No our recognition of a dignified butterfly effect. Only the force of disapproval.” – Butterfly Effect
- “Each one of us is like that butterfly the Butterfly Effect. And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations our families and our communities.” – Shawn Achor
- “A butterfly could flap its wings and set molecules of air in motion, which would move other molecules of air, in turn moving more molecules of air – eventually capable of starting a hurricane on the other side of the planet.” – Andy Andrews
- “How strange that even a very minor event, action or small shift can have such a tremendous effect. Like butterfly’s wing is capable of altering the path of tornado certainly everything, even the very tiny thing can affect everything.” – Tuwalily
- “You have been created with the ability to change the world. Every single choice you make… Every single action you take… matters. But remember, the converse is also true. Every choice you do not make… Every action you do not take… matters just as much.” – Andy Andrews
- “Making something and sending it out into the world and then people not only responding to it but adopting it for their own and making a separate thing for it, that’s beautiful. It just shows you how much you can affect other people… the butterfly effect of everything you put out into the world.” – Marketa Irglova
- “Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output… In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect – the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.” – James Gleick
- “The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland – a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth – can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth.” – Slavoj Zizek
- “Globalization means that the “butterfly effect” is everywhere at work. The mistakes of a stockbroker in Singapore or the collapse of the Baht in Bangkok, the decisions of a Finnish industrial concern, or what the Governor of Minas Gerais in Brazil decides to do about his State’s debt, have had consequences for the world as a whole.” – Jacques Chirac
- “Within hours, tweetted piece of information you’ve just doled out has become a monsoon, a hurricane of tangible energy that is literally circulating the world. It’s helped me sense the undeniable truth of quantum consciousness, the whole butterfly effect. I witness it daily. Being witness to it not only makes me come alive, it enables me to maintain hope.” – Ian Somerhalder
- “A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.” – J.D. Stroube
Inspirational Quotes About The Butterfly Effect
“The Butterfly Effect” metaphor is simply meant to demonstrate that little insignificant events can lead to significant results over time.
This idea became the basis for a branch of mathematics known as Chaos Theory, which has been applied in countless scenarios since its introduction.
- “Butterflies are self propelled flowers.” – R.H. Heinlein
- “We grow by making little great changes.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
- “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” – Carl Sagan
- “Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.” – James Monroe
- “Butterflies are nature’s angels. They remind us what a gift it is to be alive.” – Robyn Nola
- “Every decision or non-decision shifts the Universe in a whole new direction.” – Ray A. Davis
quotes about butterfly effect
- “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” – Rabindranath Tagore
- “Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness and still become something beautiful.” – Unknown
- “How does one become a butterfly? You have to want to learn to fly so much that you; Are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” – Unknown
- “Butterflies, they are like dream flowers, childhood dreams , which have broken loose from their stalks and escaped into the sunshine.” – Unknown
- “Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies, it creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.” – Stephanie Marshall
- “Short is the life of those who possess great accomplishments, and seldom do they reach a good old age. Whatever thou lovest, pray that thou mayest not set too high a value on it.” – Martial
- “I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world.” – Alice Hoffman
- “In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deteministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.” – Teresa Mummert
- “And above it all the butterfly effect. The sure knowledge that the entire life of a human being is like a single day in that human’s life: unplannable, unpredictable, governed by the hidden tides of chaotic factors and buffered by butterfly wings …” – Dan Simmons
- “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, For the want of a shoe the horse was lost, For the want of a horse the rider was lost, For the want of a rider the battle was lost, For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “You’ve heard of the butterfly effect, right? That if a butterfly flaps its wings at just the right time in just the right place. It can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away. It’s chaos theory, but see, chaos theory isn’t exactly about chaos. It’s about how a tiny change in a big system can affect everything.” – Jay Asher
- “Across the world millions of lives are altered by the absence of the dead, but three members of Teddy’s last crew – Clifford the bomb-aimer, Fraser, the injured pilot, and Charlie, the tail-end Charlie – all bail out successfully from F-Fox and see out the rest of the war in a POW camp. On their return they all marry and have children, fractals of the future.” – Kate Atkinson
- “Each smallest act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time –affecting lives unknown to the one who’s generous spirit, was the source of this good echo. Because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage, years later, and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil.” – Dean Koontz
- “Close your eyes and think about that boy. Tell me how he makes you feel. Let your mind trace over his tired shoulders. Allow your thoughts to linger on that beautiful smile. Take a deep breath and try to push those dark feelings aside. For once let go of the reins you’ve wrapped so tightly around your heart. I know you are scared. Who could blame you? Love is a hurricane wrapped inside a chrysalis. And you are a girl walking into the storm.” – Lang Leav
- “It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.” – Neil Gaiman
More About The Theory Butterfly Effect
There are several popular books, movies, and concepts based on the butterfly effect theory.
The influence of the concept can be seen in the films The Terminator, Back to the Future, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Cloud Atlas.
Lorenz subsequently dubbed his discovery “the butterfly effect”: the nonlinear equations that govern the weather have such an incredible sensitivity to initial conditions, that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas.
In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm attempts to explain chaos theory to Dr. Ellie Sattler, specifically referencing the butterfly effect, by stating “It simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems,” and “The shorthand is ‘the butterfly effect.’ A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine.”
Let us know which of the above butterfly effect sayings and quotes you resonate the most with? If you have a quote which is not on the above list, please share it in the comments section below.
Feel free to share with friends and family on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc..to spread positive vibes.
