Quotes About Events

George Soros, a complex man who thrived on rare events

The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events.

The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now

have made the claim that most of history comes from Black Swan events, while we worry about fine-tuning our understanding of the ordinary, and hence develop models, theories, or representations that cannot possibly track them or measure the possibility of these shocks.

The rarer the event, the less tractable, and the less we know about how frequent its occurrence—yet the rarer the event, the more confident these "scientists" involved in predicting, modeling, and using PowerPoint in conferences with equations in multicolor background have become.

the Black Swan is not just about the occurrence of some event but also about its depth and consequences.)

Unless something moves by more than its usual daily percentage change, the event is deemed to be noise. Percentage moves are the size of the headlines. In addition, the interpretation is not linear; a 2% move is not twice as significant an event as 1%, it is rather like four to ten times. A 7% move can be several billion times more relevant than a 1% move!

Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge

The more remote the event, the less we can get empirical data (assuming generously that the future will resemble the past) and the more we need to rely on theory.

Thou are my only reality-- all other people are but shadows to me: all events and actions, in which thou dost not mingle, are but dreams.

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

There isn't one single thing that will end unwinding. It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it's got a conscience. -Sonia

You are thirty minutes late.' 'Yes.' 'Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?' 'No.' 'Why not, pray tell?' 'Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.

But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this— we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.—Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise.

But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.

Words, when they've been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they've passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time. Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin strippd from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall. Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing. Flat and still and harmless.

History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves. So the historicity of journals like this one—their accuracy and authenticity—is a function of the reliability of the narrator

Modern "secularization" can be seen from one angle as the rejection of higher times, and the positing of time as purely profane. Events now exist only in this one dimension, in which they stand at greater and lesser temporal distance, and in relations of causality with other events of the same kind. The

Both personal experience and professional studies of social processes, after all, had led me to think that people rarely accomplish exactly what they consciously plan, and constantly find events unrolling differently from what they anticipated. Why, then, do people's descriptions and explanations of social processes overwhelmingly emphasize conscious deliberation?

All accounts of the crisis document a chain of events in which rising real estate prices led to reckless borrowing and ultimately the equivalent of a modern bank run.

Obviously, there are other factors, such as nature and nurture, along with all of the events that happen throughout your early childhood and throughout your life that will shape who you become as a person," he said. "But that anger, sadness, or fear will remain deep in your subconscious, and will dictate how you react to things in your life that don't go as planned.

Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There! That's what is amazing. We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel - and suddenly it is an ax, breaking us into pieces from the inside.

I missed a lot of time with my kids and events with my family.

We don't always choose moments. You know, sometimes they choose us.