Improbable Quotes - Page 8

• It has occurred to me that possibly the white corpuscles may have the office of picking up and digesting bacterial organisms when by any means they find their way into the blood. The propensity exhibited by the leukocytes for picking up inorganic granules is well known, and that they may be able not only to pick up but to assimilate, and so dispose of, the bacteria which come in their way does not seem to me very improbable in view of the fact that amoebae, which resemble them so closely, feed upon bacteria and similar organisms.

  George Miller Sternberg

  Mean, Science, White

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• It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Stupid, Thinking, Crowds

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Essays”

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• Which is more improbable - that the trillions of solar systems in the known universe exploded from something smaller than a pinhead or that there is an invisible, omniscient moral intelligence present everywhere that has the highest tolerance for cruelty?

  David Hayden

  Tolerance, Moral, Invisible

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• Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

  Raymond Aron

  War, Impossible

  Raymond Aron (1997). “Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology”, p.227, Transaction Publishers

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• The universe is specifically tweaked to enable life on earth-a planet with scores of improbable and interdependent life-supporting conditions that make it a tiny oasis in a vast and hostile universe.

  Norman Geisler

  Oasis, Earth, Tiny

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• People can do great things. However, there are somethings they just can't do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort. I could, however, make myself insane, if I wished. (Though if I achieved the second, I might be able to make myself think I'd achieved the first....) Anyway, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's this: great success often depends on being able to distinguish between the impossible and the improbable. Or, in easier terms, distinguishing between Popsicles and insanity. Any questions?

  Brandon Sanderson

  Thinking, Years, Lessons To Be Learned

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.179, Macmillan

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• Improbable things happen a lot...

  Jordan Ellenberg

  Happens, Things Happen

  "Did Nate Silver Actually Get Anything Wrong?". Interview with Leon Neyfakh, www.slate.com. May 17, 2016.

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• Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future,challenge the improbable and attain the impossible

  William Arthur Ward

  Motivational, Challenges, Impossible

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• I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.

  Mary Oliver

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Mary Oliver from Jan 17, 2017

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• I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.

  Wendell Berry

  Wall, Book, Thinking

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.311, Counterpoint

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• He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Fall, Hands, Tree

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.1700, Dell

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• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.

  Jane Austen

  Gratitude, Attachment, Two

  Jane Austen (2008). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.371, Waking Lion Press

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• Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses.

  John Green

  Hands, Ducks, Together

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.105, Penguin

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• Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

  Douglas Adams

  Truth, Answers, Impossible

  Douglas Adams (2016). “Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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• Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.

  Terry Pratchett

  Night, Work Out, Orangutans

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Guards! Guards!: (Discworld Novel 8)”, p.70, Random House

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• Yes, she is in love with him, and yes, in spite of his qualms and inner hesitations, he loves her back, however improbable that might seem to him. Note here for the record that he is not someone with a special fixation on young girls. Until now, all the women in his life have been more or less his own age. Pilar therefore does not represent an embodiment of some ideal female type for him--she is merely herself, a small piece of luck he stumbled across one afternoon in a public park, an exception to every rule.

  Paul Auster

  Girl, Luck, Age

  Paul Auster (2016). “Collected Novels Volume Four”, p.400, Faber & Faber

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• The impossible is more believable than the highly improbable.

  Louis Sachar

  Impossible, Believable

  Louis Sachar (2011). “The Cardturner”, p.313, A&C Black

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• The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way-- a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable

  Robert James Waller

  August, Strange Places, Retrospect

  The Bridge of Madison County (pp. 22-3)

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• This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

  John Maynard Smith

  Wind Blowing, Boeing, Steps

  "The Problems of Biology". Book by John Maynard Smith, p. 49, 1986.

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• There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible:;: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.

  Charles Babbage

  Miracle, Events, Doe

  Charles Babbage (1864). “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher”, p.476, London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green

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• Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future.

  John Forbes Nash

  Thinking, Vacation, Years

  "John F. Nash Jr. - Biographical". "Les Prix Nobel" ("The Nobel Prizes 1994") edited by Tore Frängsmyr, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. 1995.

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• Chess, which exists predominantly in two dimensions, is one of the world's most difficult games. Three-dimensional chess is an invitation to insanity. But human relationships, even of the simplest order, are like a kind of four-dimensional chess, a game whose pieces and positions change subtly and inexorably between moves, whose players stare dumbly while their powerful positions deteriorate into hopeless predicaments and while improbable combinations suddenly become inevitable. To make matters worse, some games are open to any number of players, and all sides are expected to win.

  Robert Grudin

  Powerful, Moving, Winning

  Robert Grudin (1997). “Time and the Art of Living”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The more improbable the message, the less "compressible" it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability.

  William Poundstone

  Essence, Messages, Shannon

  William Poundstone (2010). “Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street”, p.57, Macmillan

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• The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information.

  Vilem Flusser

  Photography, Cameras, Information

  Vilém Flusser (2013). “Towards a Philosophy of Photography”, p.39, Reaktion Books

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• A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

  Gene Wolfe

  Children, Light, Two

  Gene Wolfe (1972). “The fifth head of Cerberus: three novellas”, Ultramarine Pub Co

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