“In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.” PlayRealityAgeTodayTurnsChanceFourCenturyPossibilityOrdinaryAcceptedReachingCapitalistOddsNobilityOrdinary LifeKinderLikelihoodPinnacleAristocraticSociety TodayBeing Accepted Author:Alain de Botton
“We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)” IfsWarEndsSeemsFormCertainCoursesChanceCenturyOceanDisasterOptimisticInabilityPlagueComplacencyFamineNuclear WarPoisoningForecastsDrasticUnforeseen Author:John Holdren
“It was the ponderous battering ram of his novels that opened the way through the genteel reticences of American nineteenth-century fiction. . . Without [Theodore] Dreiser's treading out a path for naturalism none of us would have had a chance to publish.” WayChanceFictionNovelPathCenturyPublishNineteenth CenturyNaturalismRamsTreadingTheodoreReticenceBattering Book:The Best Times: An Informal Memoir Source: The Best Times: An Informal Memoir
“Contemporary philosophers are facing problems that were unthinkable only one century ago, such as whether space and time are mutually Independent, whether there is objective chance or only uncertainty, whether physics can explain chemical change, whether our behavior is fully determined by our genomes, whether ideation can change the brain, or whether either the economy or ideas are the ultimate roots of the social.” IdeasProblemSocialChanceSpaceBrainEconomyCenturyBehaviorRootsUltimateIndependentPhilosopherDeterminedPhysicsObjectivesContemporaryUncertaintyChemicalsTime And SpaceUnthinkableGenomeIdeation Author:Mario Bunge
“A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a physician as of 1910. Medicine was more like voodoo than science until the 20th Century.” ChanceCenturyMedicinePatientPhysicians20th CenturyVisitingVoodoo Author:Abraham Flexner
“The chance to own a home; chance to own an education; chance to get access to capital. This is the real civil rights battle of the twenty-first century.” FirstsRealHomeChanceRightsCenturyBattleTwentiesAccessCivil Rights Author:Jack Kemp