Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

A little-known truth: Every aspect of the world is fundamentally unpredictable. Computer scientists have long since proved this.

Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.

Most of the time-- 99 percent of the time-- you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes.

Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

It is such a complex matter we live within, it is impossible to track logic and decision making really, so therefore each choice can actually only be seen as coincidence.

History is totally unpredictable.

The real truth that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control, absolutely no one... Nobody is in control. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos. Now, there may be entities seeking control - the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich, the somebody-or-others - but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself... It's like trying to control a dream.

I don't think there is such a thing as as a real prophet. You can never predict the future. We know why now, of course; chaos theory, which I got very interested in, shows you can never predict the future.

This tremendous friction which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured just because they are largely due to chance.

No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.

All thoughts emit a throw of dice

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

You can't predict anything. How can you be certain about anything when everything is chaos and we're not in control?

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

My life is a big accident, so where I end up, I think it's all accidents.

The current understanding was that it was impossible to predict how something would evolve because it was a very turbulent environment full of things interacting with each other.

I tried to develop some theories that took account of the uncertainty in the world and the complexity in the world.

Most of nature is inherently chaotic. It's not rigidly determined in the old sense. It's not rigidly predictable.