Ashley Montagu Quotes

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Very low probability events occur very rarely, but sometimes they do happen.

Life is a school of probability

Every human creative endeavor is subject to mathematical law that you’re not always going to be right all the time.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities.

In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be "known" with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.

... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.

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.

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.

This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.

Science is uncertain.

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.

Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.

But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.

The unthinkable is thinkable. No: likely.

It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hour's bombardment unscratched. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.

There are people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it - like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds.