Likelihood Quotes

• Past performance speaks a tremendous amount about one's ability and likelihood for success.

  Mark Spitz

  Success, Sports, Past

  8 Copy quote

• My dogs, the only creatures on the planet marked by my singular nurturing imprint, have all turned out to be rude and self-absorbed. In all likelihood, if they were children instead of dogs, I would have foisted more Charlie Sheens or Kardashians onto our crumbling culture.

  Merrill Markoe

  Dog, Children, Self

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• The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.

  Susan Sontag

  Inspirational, Change, Community

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.243, Macmillan

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• If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

  Annie Dillard

  Atheist, Believe, Common Sense

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.146, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Confidence is not a guarantee of success, but a pattern of thinking that will improve your likelihood of success, a tenacious search for ways to make things work.

  John Eliot

  Happiness, Success, Confidence

  John Eliot, PhD (2015). “Overachievement: The Science of Working Less to Accomplish More”, p.148, Diversion Books

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• Governments are moved by numbers, and the greater the number of people who admit that they believe, the greater the likelihood that the secret - if there is one being kept - will be revealed.

  Dwight Schultz

  Believe, Government, Numbers

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• I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  Charles Darwin (1902). “Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters”, p.267, Library of Alexandria

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• The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Military, War

  Sun Tzu (2015). “The Art of War”, Booklassic

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• Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom; we ask what is likely to be observed-and with what likelihood-when we subject atoms to any specified influences such as light or heat, magnetic fields or electric currents.

  Otto Robert Frisch

  Science, Light, Atoms

  Otto Robert Frisch (1980). “What Little I Remember”, p.20, Cambridge University Press

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• There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Science, Technology, Men

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• The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000).... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.

  Fred Hoyle

  Life, Theory Of Evolution, Numbers

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• We are wide open and vulnerable and in all likelihood an activist judge will strike down our Defense of Marriage Act, our state law against gay marriage, this year. And in all likelihood, we will have gay marriage in 2004 in Minnesota , if we don't get this amendment on the ballot for November.

  Michele Bachmann

  Gay, Years, Law

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• After years spent in Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government's ineptness and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions.

  Ron Paul

  Mistake, Years, Government

  "Can Ron Paul and Conservative Evangelicals Save a Texas Death-Row Inmate?" by Stephanie Mencimer, www.motherjones.com. November 26, 2014.

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• I think there's evil on both sides [of Syria], and I think that's one reason I don't want to be involved in civil war. I see things in personal terms. I just can't see sending one of my sons - or your son or daughter - to fight in a civil war, where on one side we have a dictator, who in all likelihood gassed his people.

  Rand Paul

  Daughter, War, Fighting

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• I think it's reasonable to say that even thought, in all likelihood, we have slightly different experiences of reality, they are similar enough to us not to clash. In other words, I'm not, it's very unlikely, in fact, let's say impossible, for you to say the situation in which you and I are in right now, relative to the machinery that is capturing this.

  Antonio Damasio

  Reality, Thinking, Different Experiences

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• Placing a time limit on affirmative action would in all likelihood blunt the orchestrated politics of controversy that now bedevils it. And thinking about phasing it into a class-based entitlement program may at long last bring Americans around to a consideration of the growing inequality that threatens the harmony of our democracy far more than the alarmist cry of 'racial division.'

  Orlando Patterson

  Thinking, Class, Long

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• Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life's scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children's lives.

  Stephen Covey

  Family, Children, Father

  Stephen R. Covey (1992). “Principle Centered Leadership”, p.131, Simon and Schuster

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• Committing your goals to paper increases the likelihood of your achieving them by one thousand percent!

  Brian Tracy

  Goal, Paper, Achieve

  Twitter post from Jul 6, 2014

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• To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic.

  John Donne

  Success, Media, Achievement

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• What’s the likelihood? That the one girl who makes my heart race is the one girl who wants me in return? That the accident of my attraction coincides with the accident of hers?

  Eleanor Catton

  Girl, Heart, Race

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• If you use Facebook - as I do - Facebook in all likelihood has a unique digital file of your face, one that can be as accurate as a fingerprint and that can be used to identify you in a photo of a large crowd.

  Al Franken

  Unique, Faces, Digital

  "How Privacy Has Become an Antitrust Issue" by Al Franken, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 30, 2012.

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• Kids whose puberty begins too soon face not just psychological risks, but physical ones too, with an increased likelihood of cancer, as well as skeletal changes that could prevent them from attaining their full adult height.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Cancer, Kids, Risk

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• If your goal is to make money, becoming an entrepreneur is a sucker's bet. Sure, some entrepreneurs make a lot of money, but if you calculate the amount of stress-inducing work and time it takes and multiply that by the low likelihood of success and eventual payoff, it is not a great way to get rich.

  Eric Ries

  Stress, Goal, Entrepreneur

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• Parents should be vigilant and spiritually attentive to spontaneously occurring opportunities to bear testimony to their children. Such occasions need not be programmed, scheduled, or scripted. In fact, the less regimented such testimony sharing is, the greater the likelihood for edification and lasting impact.

  David A. Bednar

  Children, Opportunity, Impact

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• The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.

  Francois Fenelon

  Men, Doe, World

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