Quotes About Chance

success = talent + luck great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck

A recurrent theme of this book is that luck plays a large role in every story of success; it is almost always easy to identify a small change in the story that would have turned a remarkable achievement into a mediocre outcome.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence

chance variation in a small number of early movers" can have major effects in tipping large populations

The comparison of firms that have been more or less successful is to a significant extent a comparison between firms that have been more or less lucky.

I smiled and said nothing. But I thought, "Well, I took it away from you this morning. If your success was due mostly to chance, how much credit are you entitled to take for it?

These were my offerings: success = talent + luck great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck

Our predilection for causal thinking exposes us to serious mistakes in evaluating the randomness of truly random events.

The associative machinery seeks causes. The difficulty we have with statistical regularities is that they call for a different approach. Instead of focusing on how the event at hand came to be, the statistical view relates it to what could have happened instead. Nothing in particular caused it to be what it is—chance selected it from among its alternatives. Our predilection for causal thinking exposes us to serious mistakes in evaluating the randomness of truly random events.

the evidence from more than fifty years of research is conclusive: for a large majority of fund managers, the selection of stocks is more like rolling dice than like playing poker.

occupations by probability and by similarity in exactly the same way.

Gauß kam auf den Zufall zu sprechen, den Feind allen Wissens, den er immer habe besiegen wollen. Aus der Nähe betrachtet, sehe man hinter jedem Ereignis die unendliche Feinheit des Kausalgewebes. Trete man weit genug zurück, offenbarten sich die großen Muster. Freiheit und Zufall seien eine Frage der mittleren Entfernung, eine Sache des Abstands...

Seltsam sei es und ungerecht, sagte Gauß, so recht ein Beispiel für die erbärmliche Zufälligkeit der Existenz, dass man in einer bestimmten Zeit geboren und ihr verhaftet sei, ob man wolle oder nicht. Es verschaffe einem einen unziemlichen Vorteil vor der Vergangenheit und mache einen zum Clown der Zukunft.

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but everything that happens happens for no real reason.

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

C'est l'affreuse loterie de la vie

Yes, one could prepare, one could strive, one could make choices, but ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability.

one could prepare, one could strive, one could make choices, but ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability.

We don't always get to choose our assets, he reminded himself. Sometimes they choose us.

Volodya being an accidental president, do you, Allon? It was a straight KGB operation from beginning to end. Nothing was left to chance.

ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability.

Never forget, the unimaginable can happen.

En la vida no se obtiene lo que se merece, sino lo que se sabe negociar, o lo que el destino depara.

no existe persona inteligente a la que el azar le ha negado un día de gloria en un ínfimo reino,