Improbability Quotes - Page 2

• I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

  Graham Greene

  People, Devil, Enormous

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I leave you free to imagine any dialogue you please. Choose whatever may charm you. Have it, if you like, that they hear the voice of the blood, or that they fall in love at first sight... Conceive the wildest improbabilities. Have it that the depths of their beings are thrilled at accosting each other in slang. Tangle them suddenly in a swift embrace or a brotherly kiss. Do whatever you like.

  Jean Genet

  Falling In Love, Kissing, Sight

  Jean Genet (1994). “Our Lady of the Flowers”, p.59, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

  Alan Moore

  Daughter, Mother, Children

  "Watchmen". Comic book limited series by Alan Moore, September 1986 – October 1987.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end.

  Yann Martel

  Giving Up, Fighting, Loss

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Weekend, Years

  5 Copy quote

• The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

  Robert Ardrey

  Stars, Science, Men

  "African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man". Book by Robert Ardrey, 1961.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table.

  Joseph Murray

  Eye, Science, Order

  9 Copy quote

• Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

  Ronald Fisher

  Math, Degrees, Statistics

  "Evolution in Action". Book by Julian S. Huxley, 1953.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [...]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.

  Otto Weininger

  Taken, Simple, Animal

  4 Copy quote

• The 7 Principles for Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desires 1. You are a ripple in the fabric of the cosmos 2. Through the mirror of relationships you discover your nonlocal self 3. Master your inner dialogue 4. Your intent weaves the tapestry of the universe 5. Harness your emotional turbulence 6. Celebrate the dance of the cosmos 7. Access the conspiracy of improbabilities Living synchrodestiny & spontaneous fulfillment of desires.

  Deepak Chopra

  Life, Emotional, Mirrors

  11 Copy quote

• The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties, when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or "runs." What I found were "coincidences" which were connected so meaningfully that their "chance" concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure.

  Carl Jung

  Running, Collective Unconscious, Long

  Carl Gustav Jung (1981). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend - just as if it were a novel - very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Bible, Sex, Weekend

  17 Copy quote

• The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist.

  Richard Dawkins

  Doe, Argument, Prove

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.137, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever the strength of a belief strongly steps into the foreground, we must infer a certain weakness of demonstrability and the improbability of that belief.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Weakness, Steps, Belief

  4 Copy quote

• Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Home

  Charles Dickens (2006). “Our Mutual Friend: Easyread Edition”, p.26, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source