George Soros Quotes

Betting on the success of innovative technologies in the marketplace can carry all the uncertainty and risk that betting on the next card in the deck does at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. There is a factor of randomness that must be factored in, but precisely how to do so is anyone's guess.

There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.

Human affairs are governed by such a variety of whimsical circumstances, that we should always be prepared to stand the shock of that disappointment which the best concerted measures are constantly subject to.

Luck is not scalable. Luck is not a national strategy.

Everybody has ways in which they've been lucky in life, and everybody also has ways in which they've definitely rolled snake eyes.

There's no trajectory to follow. Even if you were to say, 'OK, I'm going to model my ascent based on this other person's,' luck and timing play such a big part that it's really futile.

The reality is that luck does play a part of it. It does. Ultimately it's a make or miss league.

I think you end up on the lucky side, or you don't.

You can't pick and choose who's going to win or who's gonna mess up.

Sometimes, things don't go your way. Sometimes, they do.

Even if you play well, you can lose, and vice versa.

It all comes down to which way you hit the post. Do you hit it on the inside or the outside? Does it go in, or does it go out?

Most people have a kind of survivor bias about luck. When something wonderful happens - when preparation meets opportunity, with excellent results - we think: 'How lucky!' But we don't usually acknowledge all the times when things just... fizzle out. All the times when preparation comes to nothing.

I guess if there weren't luck involved, I'd win 'em all.

This is a crazy game we play. You're going to have those times you can't get out, and those times where you can do everything right, and the ball does not fall.

And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.

Of course it's all luck.

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. ... Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

Success is a matter of luck. If you want proof, ask any failure.

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

Thoughts are odd misfires.

Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!

Sometimes, you have no idea why something works and other times, you put so much work and effort into something and it just falls flat.

Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.