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Improbability Quotes

Browse 41 quotes about Improbability.

Improbability Quotes

“REVISITING THE LIST 1. Kiss Estelle Okay, at least I've met her. She thinks I'm a creep. And that's withought her knowing I've read her diaries. Unless we somehow fall over, exactly aligned, lip to lip, and gravity causes the pressure, or we find ourselves in a darkened room and through a series of Shakespearian ID muddles she thinks she's kissing someone else, I can't say how this is ever going to happen.”

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Book:Six Impossible Things
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“The improbability of a malicious story serves but to help forward the currency of it, because it increases the scandal. So that, in such instances, the world is like the pious St. Austin, who said he believed some things because they were absurd and impossible.”

WorldSaidHelpingStoriesImpossibleIncreaseAbsurdInstanceCurrencyScandalPiousMaliciousAustinImprobability
Book:The works of Laurence Sterne, with a life of the author, written by himself
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“Okay, look at it this way: if the evening news has a very high probability of being accurate, then it's highly improbable that they would inaccurately report the numbers chosen in the lottery. That counterbalances any improbability in the choosing of those numbers, so you're quite rational to believe in this highly improbable event.”

IfsWayBelieveLooksNumbersEventsNewsOkayChosenRationalEveningReportsAccurateProbabilityLotteryImprobableImprobability
Author:William Lane Craig
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“The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.”

WorldBelieveDifferentEarthMillionsIssuesEventsEvolutionCivilizationBillionsAstronomyDevelopingOrganismsProbabilityLineageImprobabilitySaganSpeciation
Author:Ernst Mayr
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“The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.”

NeedsShouldHandsUsedReligiousAttentionIssuesAtheismSubjectsAtheistPositive AtheismDebateMeaningfulAgnosticProbabilityPiousAccusationImmoralityFalsityImprobability
Author:S. T. Joshi
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“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles.”

KindLittlesHandsFormUniverseEdgesCreatorComplicatedDefinedComplexityKnivesParticlesParametersImprobability
Author:Francis Collins
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“Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.”

IfsWorldBelieveWholeSeemsNatureCommonCreationJudgingClaimsTradeCommon SenseRevelationsAnarchyFringeExtremismLunaticLikelihoodGiraffeImprobability
Author:Annie Dillard
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“Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours.”

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Book:Our Mutual Friend: Easyread Edition
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“But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.”

ThinkingMenWellsMayReasonChristianDoubtSeriousThoughtfulArticlesCreedsConsolationRevoltInconsistencyIrrationalityConjectureImprobability
Book:The Works of Thomas Paine: A Hero in the American Revolution. With an Account of His Life ...
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“I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now [Francis] Collins says, "Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this." Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, "We're working on it. We're struggling to understand."”

ThinkingNeedsWellsMotherFatherResponsibilityStruggleHonestScientistIncrediblesExplanationQuestsCopMother And FatherEvasionImprobability
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.”

IfsYearsWholeSexNovelMiracleShockWeekendShockedImpossibilityWretchedInconsistencySadismImprobability
Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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“I leave you free to imagine any dialogue you please. Choose whatever may charm you. Have it, if you like, that they hear the voice of the blood, or that they fall in love at first sight... Conceive the wildest improbabilities. Have it that the depths of their beings are thrilled at accosting each other in slang. Tangle them suddenly in a swift embrace or a brotherly kiss. Do whatever you like.”

IfsFirstsMayFallVoiceImagineBloodPleaseKissingSightEmbraceFalling In LoveDepthDialogueCharmLove At First SightSlangBrotherlyImprobability
Book:Our Lady of the Flowers
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“And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.”

MenHumansChildrenReasonFormMotherHateMillionsAliveGenerationsAirSonThousandDaughterGoldMiracleUnionsMeetingsChaosEggsAncestorOddsPreciseCompetingMother LoveAgainst The OddsImprobabilityCouplingFertilization
Author:Alan Moore
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“I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end.”

GivingLittlesStillsEndsMatterFightingLosesLossBattleCostGiving UpFierceNever Giving UpWill To LiveImprobability
Book:Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition
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“It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table.”

WayKindDifferentEyeScienceOrderTenDegreesPerfectionLettersMathematicsTablesComplexesMathematicalDifferent WaysThrowingOrgansDemonstrationExaggerationImprobability
Author:Joseph Murray
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“There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [...]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.”

MayFormSidesLinesSimpleAnimalTakenFindingsBirdPlantGrantedCombinationFeminineChemicalsMetalsMasculineMixturesTaken For GrantedMammalsCleavageImprobability
Author:Otto Weininger
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“Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.”

MayMadePastScienceDiscoveryScientistExpectedMade ItRemarkableDestinationPhenomenonInherentCommonplaceRaritySimultaneousImprobability
Book:The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science
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“The 7 Principles for Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desires 1. You are a ripple in the fabric of the cosmos 2. Through the mirror of relationships you discover your nonlocal self 3. Master your inner dialogue 4. Your intent weaves the tapestry of the universe 5. Harness your emotional turbulence 6. Celebrate the dance of the cosmos 7. Access the conspiracy of improbabilities Living synchrodestiny & spontaneous fulfillment of desires.”

LifeSelfDesireUniversePrinciplesEmotionalMastersMirrorsAccessDialogueCelebrateFulfillmentCosmosOver YouConspiracyFabricSpontaneousRippleHarnessTapestryTurbulenceImprobability
Author:Deepak Chopra
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“The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties, when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or "runs." What I found were "coincidences" which were connected so meaningfully that their "chance" concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure.”

LongProblemRunningFoundChanceMiddleFiguresDegreesLong TimeConnectionsTwentiesConnectedUnconsciousCollectivesCoincidenceSynchronicityPuzzledInvestigatingCollective UnconsciousImprobabilityConcurrenceCoincidence In Life
Book:The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche
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“The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.”

WorldStillsWaterForgetCommonExistenceGreaterAirFieldsColdBirdEmptyMiracleWineDistanceExtraordinaryWarmBreadSoilSunlightContinuingMiraculousGrapesLiliesDaily BreadStellarImprobabilityOur Daily BreadSmall Miracles
Author:Wendell Berry
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