Improbable Quotes - Page 4

• Everybody has a different idea of when those good old days were, but everyone is convinced that there was a time when literature really mattered and that it doesn't now. They also tend to believe that it really matters someplace else - in very improbable places often. Russia is someone's idea of a place where literature really counts.

  Robert Hass

  Believe, Ideas, Russia

  Interview with Sarah Pollock, www.motherjones.com. March/April, 1997.

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• Are we expected to live in a world where we can no longer send death threats to colleagues via email? Where we can no longer IM other people to suggest physically improbable and morally dodgy sexual practices? Where doctoring photos of people to place them in legally compromising positions is frowned upon? Who wants to live in that sort of world? Not this column, that's for sure.

  Ian O'Doherty

  Practice, People, Want

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• the wide discrepancy between reason and feeling may be unreal; it is not improbable that intellect is a high form of feeling - a specialized, intensive feeling about intuitions.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Discrepancies Between, Feelings, Intuition

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• The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Beautiful, Two, History

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• Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!

  Madeline Kahn

  Sex, Clue, Life After Death

  "Fictional character: Mrs. White". "Clue", www.imdb.com. 1985.

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• Its far easier to brush off death if the death in question seems impossible or improbable as a personal threat.

  Jennifer Armintrout

  Impossible, Easier, Brushes

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• Seurat and Signac mixed paintings with the dry and abstract laws of science. This approach, in my opinion, usually strays from the purpose of art in general. Because it means that one cannot expect from an artifact, that is created with mathematical laws, to establish an improbable and irrational relationship between the work and the viewer.

  Guity Novin

  Art, Mean, Law

  Negin magazine, No 77, p. 57, 1971.

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• Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

  Ada Leverson

  Real, Literature, Unexpected

  Ada Leverson (1907). “The Twelfth Hour”

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• Habit hath so vast a prevalence over the human mind that there is scarce anything too strange or too strong to be asserted of it. The story of the miser who, from long accustoming to cheat others, came at last to cheat himself, and with great delight and triumph picked his own pocket of a guinea to convey to his hoard, is not impossible or improbable.

  Henry Fielding

  Strong, Long, Mind

  Henry Fielding (2012). “Joseph Andrews”, p.186, tredition

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• A nap is not to be confused with sleeping. We sleep to recharge our bodies. We nap to care for our souls. When we nap, we are resting our eyes while our imaginations soar. Getting ready for the next round. Sorting, sifting, separating the profound from the profane, the possible from the improbable. Rehearsing our acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, our surprise on receiving the MacArthur genius award. This requires a prone position. If we're lucky, we might drift off, but we won't drift far. Just far enough to ransom our creativity from chaos.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Confused, Creativity, Sleep

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• Start with the impossible. Proceed calmly towards the improbable. No worry, there are at least five exits.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Worry, Exit, Impossible

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• However far back we may be able to trace the - so to speak - internal history of the Universe, there can be no question of arguing that this or that external origin is either probable or improbable. We do not have, and we necessarily could not have, experience of other Universes to tell us that Universes, or Universes with these particular features, are the work of Gods, or of Gods of this or that particular sort.

  Antony Flew

  Atheism, May, Able

  Antony Flew (1984). “God, freedom, and immortality: a critical analysis”

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• The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization.

  Lyndon LaRouche

  Summer, Spring, Autumn

  "The Coming Disintegration of Financial Markets". archive.larouchepac.com. June 24, 1994.

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• it's been my experience that while impossible things happen frequently, improbable ones never do.

  Craig L. Rice

  Impossible Things, Happens, Things Happen

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• That Edison or Lincoln could have been Edison or Lincoln after four years of Harvard is improbable.

  Arthur Brisbane

  Education, Years, Four

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• The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his sense, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events.

  Ray Bradbury

  Events, Certain, Middle

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• Sceptics are generally ready to believe anything, provided it is sufficiently improbable.

  Karl Ludwig von Knebel

  Believe, Skepticism, Ready

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• It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Income, Patterns, Might

  "Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics" by Kenneth Boulding, University of Michigan Press, (p. 142), 1970.

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• History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.

  Emile M. Cioran

  History, Mind, Degradation

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• Utopia is the grotesque en rose, the need to associate happiness - that is, the improbable - with becoming, and to coerce an optimistic, aerial vision to the point where it rejoins its own source: the very cynicism it sought to combat. In short, a monstrous fantasy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Optimistic, Rose, Vision

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

  Mason Cooley

  Real, Matter, Facts

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• ...(that) any general system of conveying passengers would ... go at a velocity exceeding ten miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable.

  Thomas Tredgold

  Velocity, Hours, Miles

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• There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal.

  Abraham Lincoln

  People, Honor, Vivid

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.46, Fordham Univ Press

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• The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction, once may be enough.

  George Wald

  Origin Of Life, Growth, Important

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• No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Intelligent, People

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