Lauren Oliver Quotes

I don't like expeditions where it is a total lottery whether you live or die. You have to keep those sort of good luck cards for rare occasions!

If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!

I base my calculation on the expectation that luck will be against me.

The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero.

She looks at me out of the side of her uncovered eye. "Chess, Zombie: defending yourself from the move that hasn't happened yet. Does it matter that he doesn't light up through our eyepieces? That he missed us when he could have taken us own? If two possibilities are equally probable but mutually exclusive, which one matters the most? Which one do you bet your life on?

If I got a chance to take one percent of the deal either way, I would make that bet.

Risk is the salt and sugar of life.

The fortune of war is always doubtful.

Always examine the dice.

The grand assertion is that you must see the world through probability and that probability is the only guide you need.

I believe the calculation of the quantity of probability might be improved to a very useful and pleasant speculation, and applied to a great many events which are accidental, besides those of games; only these cases would be infinitely more confused, as depending on chances which the most part of men are ignorant of.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.

A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.

Almost all life depends on probabilities.

It is still an open question as to whether mankind or insects shall ultimately inherit the earth. It is my opinion that mankind ... has about a 50-50 chance...

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility.

There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.

Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we're trying to do. It's imperfect, but that's what it's all about.

However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.

Because she was seventeen, and still alive, against thousands of years' worth of odds.Because she knew enough to fear what the future would bring.