Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

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

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

My life experience has taught me nothing happens by chance. Even the idea of the ball in a roulette game: it's not chance it ends up in a certain place. It's forces that are at play.

Why does anything ever happen? Some things happen and some don't.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

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.

It is impossible for a Die, with such determined force and direction which makes it fall on such a determined side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such a determin'd side, and therefore I call that Chance, which is nothing, but want of Art.

It is our custom to say that someone is 'lucky' or 'unlucky' if they meet with fortunate or unfortunate circumstances, respectively. It is, however, too simplistic to think in terms of random 'luck.' Even from a scientific point of view, this is not a sufficient explanation.

There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views.

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck.

Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

It doesn't matter how anything happens.

This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

Random questions are the least random of all questions.

Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.