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Odds Quotes

“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
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“I'm substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They're sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they're hitting back and forth.”

ShouldGamesHouseSpaceWhiteSituationPolicyConcernedCongressAgencyWhite HouseOddsHittingBack And ForthNasaFuture DirectionShuttlecockHitting Back
Author:Neil Armstrong
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“The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.”

PeoplePersonsWaitingEffortAttitudeAwarenessGreatnessHugeListeningDegreesNewsOrdinaryMachinesEntertainmentSensesConsumersAnalysisGoodsWakingVehicleHeroismOddsEarningExceptionalPassivityOrdinary Person
Author:Marshall McLuhan
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“I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he invariably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.”

DoeLawFoundNaturalLossGriefFailingAddictionConvincedCertaintyLiberalismDelusionFundRetiringOddsSchemesAddictNatural LawArithmeticRoulette
Author:David Mamet
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“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.”

PeopleTryingStoriesAmericaSpiritSimpleImpossibleGenerationsReadyCreedsOddsUnlikelyNot ReadyYes We CanImpossible Odds
Book:Change We Can Believe In
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“As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.”

WantFirstsCountryStatesGovernmentPastGamesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesEconomyGreaterCenturyTwentiesCrisisDepthFinancialDisasterRecoveryShockMassiveChickensSteadyOddsPackagesCliffsRecessionsFinancial CrisisChasmsAusterityLooming
Author:Fareed Zakaria
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“The danger of Iran is if you listen to what the Ayatollah is saying, to what the Mullahs are saying, rational self-preservation is not their objective. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon the odds are unacceptably high that that weapon will not be simply stockpiled, but it will be detonated over Tel Aviv, or New York, or Los Angeles.”

IfsSelfDangerNew YorkWeaponsNuclearObjectivesRationalAcquireIranLos AngelesNuclear WeaponsOddsPreservationSelf PreservationMullahs
Author:Ted Cruz
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“The chief obstacle to success lies in the stubborn fact that if the favorable prospects of a concern are clearly apparent they are almost always reflected already in the current price of the stock. Buying such an issue is like betting on a topheavy favorite in a horse race. The chances may be on your side, but the real odds are against you.”

IfsMayRealFactsLyingSidesChanceRaceIssuesConcernHorseCurrentsObstaclesChiefsBuyingOddsStubbornYour SideProspectsBetting
Author:Benjamin Graham
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“Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem.”

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Author:Ellen Willis
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“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.”

ThinkingMenDoeIdeasDoneWholeFactsFacesLostTermEmotionHe ManOfficeMarkChiefsCandidatesVotersDreadOddsPacksDominantIncapableMediocreBarkElementalsWeighingPublic OfficeComprehendingDevious
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.”

PeopleBelieveLooksDifferentEnoughActionDiesVisionPossibilityEvidenceOptimismNotionRationalGuaranteesPrisonerHeroicOddsSecularContagiousNew PossibilitiesAgainst The OddsOptimism And Hope
Author:Cornel West
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“And last, my mom. I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later, I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here. We went from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I had was when we moved into our first apartment, no bed, no furniture and we just sat in the living room and just hugged each other. We thought we made it.”

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Author:Kevin Durant
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“According to PhD astrophysicists and qualified American science professors, the odds of the more than 2,500 prophecies found in the Bible being fulfilled by chance are 1 with 2,000 zeros after it. According to the mathematical science of probability, if a number has more than 50 zeros after it, the odds of that happening by chance is virtually impossible. This is irrefutable proof that the Bible is inspired by God!”

IfsFoundChanceNumbersImpossibleHappeningsInspiredProofMathematicalProfessorsOddsFulfilledProphecyProbabilityQualifiedChances ArePhds
Author:Hugh Ross
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“To rest in God's power when your own weaknesses seem to be screaming at you? That's grace! To be confident in who God is for you when you feel overwhelmed by odds against you? That's peace! To stand alone against massive intimidation? That's trust! To know beyond any shadow of a doubt that God is bigger, and therefore you cannot lose? That's the faith that moves mountains!”

KnowsFeelsSeemsMovingLosesDoubtGraceMountainWeaknessShadowBiggerMassiveOddsOverwhelmedIntimidationStand AloneBe ConfidentMove MountainsWho God IsOdds Against You
Author:Graham Cooke
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“You must ignore what everyone else is doing and trade only when you feel the odds are in your favor. In short, trade only when you and you alone are comfortable that the expected return of your trades will be positive. That might mean you'll have to sit out a few parties, but it will also mean that you'll have more profits over the course of your trading career.”

FeelsMeanMightCoursesPartyCareersReturnComfortableTradeProfitExpectedFavorsOddsTradingBeing Positive
Author:Gary B Smith
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“Wall Street sometimes gets confused between risk and uncertainty, and you can profit handsomely from that confusion. The low-risk, high-uncertainty [situation] gives us our most sought after coin-toss odds. Heads, I win; tails, I don't lose much.”

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Book:The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns
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“it is only on posters and in advertisement pages that Americans have those chubby cheeks, expanding smiles, smooth looks, and faces flushed with well-being. In fact, almost all are at odds with themselves; drink offers a remedy for this inner malady of which boredom is the most usual sign: as drinking is accepted by society, it does not appear as a sign of their [Americans'] inability to adapt themselves; it is rather the adapted form of inadaptability.”

WellsLooksDoeFactsFacesFormDrinkOffersPagesDrinkingAcceptedWell BeingBoredomUsualCheeksRemedyOddsSmoothInabilityExpandingPostersAdaptedAdvertisementsMaladyChubby Cheeks
Author:Simone de Beauvoir
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“I really like Barack Obama. I think that he's working very hard. He's trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world. The previous administration was a total disaster, a total catastrophe. He was handed a pretty bad deck of cards. And I'm not saying I agree with everything he's doing. He's a champion. I mean, he won against all odds. When he first announced, people were giving him virtually no chance. And he's just done something that's amazing.”

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Author:Donald Trump
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“To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.”

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Book:Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry
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“Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!”

FeelsWritingLongIdeasBodyNaturalDutySafePaperLettersBusyKicksOddsInterfereIdleOutletsObscenePompousDepravedCrank
Author:Josephine Tey
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“TEF is predicated on logic, a simple wager that every human faces: If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible-the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality-since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion.”

IfsKnowsWantTryingHumansLongHelpingSeemsFacesDesireValuesDiesHuman BeingsSimpleImpossibleLogicCeaseConclusionImmortalityReasoningSomedayImmortalLogicalOddsNeverthelessEvidentConstructiveHuman FacesWagers
Author:Zoltan Istvan
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