Home / Topics / Chance Quotes

Chance Quotes

Browse 7631 quotes about Chance.

Chance Quotes

“As in the game of billiards, the balls are constantly producing effects from mere chance, which the most skillful player could neither execute nor foresee, but which, when they do happen, serve mainly to teach him how much he has still to learn; so it is in the most profound and complicated game of politics and diplomacy. In both cases, we can only regulate our play by what we have seen, rather than by what we have hoped; and by what we have experienced, rather than by what we have expected.”

Stills Play Happens Games Chance Teach Cases Player Effects Balls Mere Profound Complicated Expected Diplomacy Skillful Having Hope Billiards

Author:Charles Caleb Colton

“Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.”

Differences Chance Amount Accounts Mere Species Variety Habitual Origin Of Species

Book:Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies

Source: Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies

“The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.”

Way Ends Whole Chance Mere Length Rope Stratagem Nooses Foreseeing

Book:Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction

Source: Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction

“Luck, if it mean nothing more than an event of which the cause is not apparent, is a term that may be employed without error; but if it means, as it generally does, an event which has no cause at all, a mere chance, it is a bad word, a heathen term; drop it from your vocabulary; trust nothing to luck, nor expect anything from it; avoid all practical use or dependence upon this or its kindred words, fate, chance, fortune.”

Ifs May Mean Doe Use Causes Term Chance Fate Events Luck Errors Fortune Mere Practicals Dependence Vocabulary Employed Kindred Heathen Bad Word

Book:The young man's friend and guide through life to immortality

Source: The young man's friend and guide through life to immortality

“Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be.”

Life Is Chance Mere

Book:Blade of Tyshalle

Source: Blade of Tyshalle

“In the same way the eminence attaching to the mere possession of great wealth disappoints us nine times out of ten, especially if the wealth has been accumulated rapidly. For great wealth is accumulated rapidly by cunning or chance, or a mixture of the two. Cunning has nothing to do with high qualities; it is rather a presumption against them; while chance has nothing to do with them either. Therefore it is that men are always complaining after meeting So-and-so, that he seemed to be astonishingly stupid, though he made a million in ten years and started as a pauper.”

“Dependent Origination is the teaching (that life) is not the mere play of blind chance, but has an existence that is dependent upon conditions. That, precisely with the removal of these conditions, those things that have arisen in dependence upon them-thus also all suffering-must perforce disappear and cease to be.”

Play Life Is Suffering Chance Existence Teaching Conditions Blind Mere Disappear Karma Cease Dependent Dependence Removal

Author:Gautama Buddha

“To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.”

Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age'; the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.”

Men Humans Children Age Lying Speak Chance Human Beings Mere Extraordinary Old Man

Book:La vieillesse

Source: La vieillesse

“We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.”

World Chance Mere

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“it will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.”

Source: Desert Solitaire

“Very little evidence was found that any individual fund was able to do significantly better than that which we expected from mere random chance.”

Littles Able Found Individual Chance Evidence Mere Investing Expected Fund Random Chance

Author:Michael Jensen

“The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate.”

Humans Doe Reason Enough Evil Names Chance Existence Mankind Human Nature Weakness Ultimate Mere Human Condition Cowardice Nobility Prevailing Constituents Slate Slim

Author:John Simon

“Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.”

Way Facts Chance Perfect Mere Elbows

Author:Martin Amis