Voltaire Quotes

In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.

Probability is the very guide of life.

Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.

Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it.

A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is-- blind or not-- a good world to live in, a promising universe.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

Random chance is not sufficient to explain random chance. ~Jubal Harshaw

Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

Without rain, there is no life.

Our time on Earth is so random.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I look out of this window and I think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and birds and everything else and I'm part of it. I didn't ask to be put here, I've been lucky in finding myself here.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities.

I'm always trying to calculate the mathematical probability of certain outcomes.

The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known - it's not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.

Nothing is so unpredictable as a throw of the dice, and yet every man who plays often will at some time or other make a Venus-cast: now and then he indeed will make it twice and even thrice in succession. Are we going to be so feebleminded then as to aver that such a thing happened by the personal intervention of Venus rather than by pure luck?

Based on the law of probability Everything is possible because The sheer existence of possibility Confirms the existence Of impossibility.

Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.

There is general agreement among researchers that nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not-and few of them do-are playing a game of chance.

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.