Quotes About Chance

The problem that this amount of random activity causes is that it's not just what gets done that is random – what doesn't get done is random too. This means that whether something gets done or not is as much a matter of chance as of rational decision.

Actually, science has determined that a flipped coin is not strictly a fifty-fifty proposition," said Ajay. "Surprisingly, the coin will return to whichever side you're holding faceup in your hand before it is flipped, exactly fifty-one percent of the time.

I'm thankful to get the opportunity to direct. I hope I don't mess it up.

If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.

We're so far from having any control over what happens to us, it's not even funny. Well, that's not true, actually. It is funny.

fate is the ultimate preexisting condition.

Don't confuse opportunity with leadership. Others control many of our opportunities, so that shouldn't be our concern. We control our readiness.

It felt like one of those perfect moments where everything comes together. But like I said, I don't believe in accidents. Even if this strange, musical moment, the final result of a long chain of unlikely events, never came to anything else, it was meant to be. Something new had been born.

here is a better chance of a repository of the kind of wisdom I choose to be governed by among average people than among Ph.D's at Harvard."22

Every step you take, a million doors open in front of you like poppies; your next step closes them, and another million bloom. You get on a train, you pick up a lamp, you speak, you don't. What decides why one thing gets picked to be the way it will be? Accident? Fate? Some weakness in ourselves? Forget your harps, your tin-foil angels—the only heaven worth having would be the heaven of answers.

There is no security in life, only opportunity.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

It's funny, but... you're sort of a moving target for fortune, and you never know when it will befall you.

Some people play a horse to win, some to place. I should have bet this horse to live.

I was told I had a two per cent chance of getting pregnant, so I say she's a two per cent baby.

I bought a million lottery tickets. I won a dollar.

How are we going to get out of here?""Oh, escape is easy once you have the right

And I meant to tell you: that was a one-in-a-thousand shot."She raised her hand. "Don't.""It was awesome, " George confirmed. "It really was, " Jack said. "His head exploded.

I can't believe that out of a hundred thousand sperm you were the quickest.

Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past.

You have to make smart decisions, but you never know what will happen in the future.

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.

Predition is risky, especially of the future.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.