Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen.

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.

Luck is statistics taken personally.

Everybody believes in chance.

Used to think that luck wuz luck and nuthin' else but luck-- It made no diff'rence how or when or where or why it struck; But sev'ral years ago I changt my mind, an' now proclaim That luck's a kind uv science--same as any other game.

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

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.

Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance.

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

Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it.

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.

Almost all life depends on probabilities.

Statistics were magic like this: they could tell you with near-certainty that a thing would occur, without a hint of when or where.

Random chance is not sufficient to explain random chance. ~Jubal Harshaw

Just think of all the billions of coincidences that don't happen.

Having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

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

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

Open the history of the past at whatsoever page you will and there you shall find coincidence at work bringing about events that the merest chance might have averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations.

It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results.

Correlation is not cause, it is just a 'music of chance'.