Best 2144 quotes in «chance quotes» category

I think… that love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply an encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference and not only in terms of identity. And you can even be tested and suffer in the process. In today’s world, it is generally thought that individuals only pursue their own self-interest. Love is an antidote to that. Provided it isn’t conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn’t calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance. It takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can experience the world from the perspective of difference. In this respect it has universal implications: it is an individual experience of potential universality, and is thus central to philosophy, as Plato was the first to intuit.

I thought how lucky you might be to find not one but two extraordinary men to love - and what a fluke it was if they happened to love you back.

It is a West zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of subtropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant life forms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials from the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to 'have a nice diurnal anomaly.

It is important to distinguish 'pure chance' from 'chance' or 'accident.' Things may happen by chance or accident in a purely deterministic universe...Now there is perhaps a sense of 'could not have done otherwise' in which whether or not a person could or could not have done otherwise depends on whether or not the universe is deterministic.

It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.

It is not cowardice but courage to acknowledge the superior role chance plays in steering the course of life, and at the same time to take responsibility for the margin of difference our personal choices do make within the parameters of chance.

It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.

It’s always fifty-fifty, Pete. Like tossing a coin. Either I’m wrong, or I’m right, either you bring us back, or you don’t, either Deputy Chiefs are what they say they are, or they’re not. Always fifty-fifty. One thing or the other is always true.

It's always the improbable that happens.

It’s a number.” “It’s not,” she said. “It’s a chance to wake up new.

​It's Hard, Not to Fail, but, there is Always a Chance of Success. Of course, there is No Chance of Success, if You didn't Try.

It's my job to worry about you. I'm in love with you, Stacy. I have been ever since I can remember. It's always been you.

It's funny isn't it? People claim to know what love is -- yet the minute they're given the opportunity to prove it -- they bail.

It’s nice to know someone thinks of you as a person, not an opportunity.

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?" "No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down. "Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage.

It's not who, it's when

It was more important for me to try, than to not have the chance at all.

It’s ridiculous to repeat costly mistakes because you believe there is always a next chance. Mistakes may flow, but you have all it takes to close the canals they used!

It was at this time that backgammon was invented and began to be popular. It is a kind of paradigm of how wealth is acquired, which in this world is not the reward of intelligence or ability, just as luck is not a product of skill... If luck favours the player, he gets what he wants; if it doesn't, a skilled and prudent man cannot win that which fortune only bestows on whom it likes. It is thus that the good things of this world are apportioned by chance.

...it wasn't for the love of a man that she took those chances, but for the love of a horse.

It will be interesting to have chance to view and the places from rich and poor to see what happens... if somebody knows the chance to do it it's smaller than before.

I've always sucked at games of chance. Always hated them for that reason.

I was a slave, but never a fool. This empire is vast beyond imagining and we have killed only a fraction of the force they will bring against us. They will kill us, all of us, for we are slaves and we cannot be allowed even the barest hope of freedom. Without us, they have no empire.

Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taugh to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if... If we had known who we really were.

Many Christians, including BioLogos, like to throw out the "you can't take the Bible literally" argument. They think it is the ultimate zinger that will end any debate in their favor. But if we shouldn't take the Bible literally, why should we believe God is real in the literal sense? Perhaps God is a metaphor also. Maybe God is really a metaphor for nature or chance. Heaven forbid! However, BioLogos insists on having it both ways: God is literally true but the Bible is not. That's like saying Mother Goose is literally true but her nursery rhymes are not.

Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.

Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the die will come up proximately 1 ,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come approximately up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term "probability" includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification. Cf. Ernst Mally's Probability and Law, Hans Reichenbach The theory Probability, Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, von Mises' Probability, Statistics and Truth

Luck is sometimes merciful. The Game never is.

Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.

Most sane human beings who have managed to attain and retain fame each uses it to dramatically increase their name’s chances of being remembered until Jesus comes back, since their heart cannot do what they consciously or unconsciously lust for, that is to say, for it to beat until Jesus returns.

Much of what happens in life is a chance.

Never waste your time if you miss a chance, should not wait, it will not back, grasp another for your career, future, and life.

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

Never undermine the power of passion. You have a very high chance of achieving anything you are passionate about.

No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor -- to anchor an embryo and forever end its mobile phase, however passive that mobility was. Once the first root is extended, the plant will never again enjoy any hope (however feeble) of relocating to a place less cold, less dry, less dangerous. Indeed, it will face frost, drought, and greedy jaws without any possibility of flight. The tiny rootlet has only once chance to guess what the future years, decades -- even centuries -- will bring to the patch of soil where it sits. It assesses the light and humidity of the moment, refers to its programming, and quite literally takes the plunge.

No one can express who you are and what you stand for more than you do. Don't leave that to chance or others. If you do so, the likelihood of other people misgauging you is high. Take charge!

No one knew what she was doing in Colonia Hidalgo, although it was most likely, according to the police, that she'd been taking a walk and had come upon death purely by chance.

Not all can believe anything they want to, because not all have the ability to believe.

Nothing in this world is ‘by chance’. There are “covered causes” (hidden) within. ‘By chance’ is also the result of an effort.

Nur wenn wir neue Wege gehen werden wir zu neuen Erkenntnissen gelangen. Wenn wir nicht bereit sind alte, gewohnte und oftmals auch ausgetretene Pfade zu verlassen werden wir uns eines Tages in einer Sackgasse verrennen.

Nothing won't change, until the choice is placed first. And until when choice is given a chance.

Now we have one chance in some case, as in this body but in other body we will have + one because we haven't made a choice.

Often something sweet given at a critical time becomes poisonous later, or something typically considered a misfortune gives the person a chance to be reborn.

Nothing that happens to you was meant to be. The only thing about you that was meant to be is you. Blaze your own trail.

Often-times, grass was more useful than gold. Man was more desirable than a beast. Chance was more seductive than knowledge, and eternal life was completely meaningless without love.

Often what you humans call chance is instead the workings of a deeper pattern, which the casual eye cannot easily perceive.

Oh, many a shaft at random sent Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word at random spoken May soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!

One chance--that's what she had seen she had--one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for falling, and she had taken that chance and come this far and been found out.

On dit que la chance ne passe qu'une fois à votre portée, qu'il faut la saisir à son tour. Après c'est fini. Elle est partie ailleurs et ne reviendra plus. Seuls les amnésiques n'ont pas de regrets.

Once in life, everyone gets a chance of true love and loyal friends, but the silly people do not realise and run, for the false objects and lose the real ones.