Carly Simon Quotes

Most technological advances in our life now come from serendipitous discoveries. That is a contraction of rocket technology and computer technology and atomic clock technology.

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

Slightest accidents open up new worlds.

The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need.

There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

I didn't foresee my career. Things happen.

Synergy and serendipity often play a big part in medical and scientific advances.

Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise.

Certain things you have to stumble on to. They can't be preprogrammed.

The beginnings of science have often the appearance of chance. A felicitous accident throws a certain natural fact under the notice of an inquiring and philosophic mind.

… in history, so many circumstances of a small and accidental nature are relevant, that no broad and simple uniformities are possible.

Personally, getting into college was a big deal because I realized it's probably one of the only things I've fully planned. The rest of my life has been, for the most part, a nice little happy accident. I'm glad that it happened this way, but it's nonetheless unintentional.

With many things in life, you're there because there's a cute girl around that you want to go out with, and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with 'Amarcord' to me.

My career has been a level of serendipity all along. I've never planned anything out more than a few years. All the places we lived - the 12, 13 countries - and the companies I worked for were a combination of circumstances.

I like going into places that you never know what you're going to find because you can go in with no ideas and leave with thousands.

We'll have all sorts of crazy signals. And you'd be a damned fool if you didn't look for things you weren't expecting, because that's probably what you're going to see first.

I didn't have any plans to act, as I thought I would take up a job behind the camera. But, life had its own plans for me. In fact, every time I plan things, they never happen.

Sometimes you don't know what a book is about until you are finished with it and you're talking about it.

The desire to get from point A to point B in the shortest, most efficient amount of time without ever wandering off path, can mean you miss out on those happy accidents that push you further and faster in a direction you never even considered.

Along the way, a lot of filmmakers get rid of things that are messy or don't fit in some ways. To me, I want to work with serendipity and things we happened upon. That's our job, that's what the form demands.

With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.

the discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go conscious control.