John Arbuthnot Quotes

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

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

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.

You never know why something works or doesn't.

But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

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.

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

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

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.

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.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

You can't really explain why things happen.

If we knew enough, fortune would turn out to be nature.

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.

You just never know how anything is going to go.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

You believe in a God who plays dice, I in complete law and order.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.

Fortuna smiles and frowns according to a timetable surprising even to herself.

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain.