quotations about chance
It is the part of the wise, in their estimates of success, to make due allowance for the effects of chance.
THUCYDIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.
HORACE WALPOLE
letter, Jan. 19, 1777
The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.
ERIC CHAISSON
Epic of Evolution
Since chance is a clash of accidentals, it is not a genuine being because it is not truly one.... This is not to say that chance is not real, but merely that it does not have a real being, a real essence of its own, because it does not have a real unity of its own. It is a sheer coincidence of contingent facts, the multiplicity of which can be unified only in thought.
DENNIS N. KENEDY DARNOI
The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann: A Historico-Critical Monograph
Chance is blind and is the sole author of creation.
X. B. SAINTINE
Piccola
Chances that are seen but not taken are common. Many are too busy to recognize chance. Chance, in a sense, is change, whether it be change in a relationship or a job or another aspect of life. Chance can be accompanied by personal and emotional loss, but any chance not taken is a chance you many never have again.
SHEILA M. CROWDER
Our Creator of Religious Freedom and Me
How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
The mines of knowledge are oft laid bare through the forked hazel wand of chance.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
The word chance is a dark first step for many. Chance is what opens the door of opportunity. Believe that you can take a chance and do something new. It could be the best experience of your life.
SHEILA M. CROWDER
Our Creator of Religious Freedom and Me
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
BIBLE
Ecclesiastes 9:11
There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.
W. G. SIMMS
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.
THOMAS HARDY
Far from the Madding Crowd
Million-to-one chances ... crop up nine times out of ten.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Equal Rites
It is impossible for a Die, with such determin'd force and direction, not to fall on such determin'd side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such determin'd side, and therefore I call it Chance, which is nothing but the want of art.
JOHN ARBUTHNOT
Of the Laws of Chance
Howbeit I, who deem me child of chance--
Chance that gives good--will spurn dishonour from me.
Chance was my mother, and coeval months
Showed me forth lowly, then exalted me.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus the King
Chance never writ a legible book; chance never built a fair house; chance never drew a neat picture. It never did any of these things, nor ever will; nor can it be without absurdity supposed able to do them, which yet are works very gross and rude, very easy and feasible, as it were, in comparison to the production of a flower or a tree.
ISAAC BARROW
Works
Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.
AMOS TVERSKY
Judgment Under Uncertainty
Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
STEPHEN KING
The Stand
We live as it were by chance, and by chance we are governed.
SENECA
Seneca's Morals