Odds Quotes - Page 10

• The odds are so stacked against you to have a music career in a place where there's virtually no music industry. So I always attribute it to God.

  Pharrell Williams

  Careers, Attributes, Music Industry

  "Transcript: Pharrell Williams In Conversation With NYU Tisch & NPR Music". Interview with Jason King, www.npr.org. October 29, 2015.

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• The natural state of mankind ... and I know that this is a controversial idea... is freedom... And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices.

  John Quincy Adams

  Freedom, Children, Men

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• Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality ?

  Scott Adams

  Science, Reality, Would Be

  Scott Adams (2004). “God's Debris: A Thought Experiment”, p.21, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.

  Graham Greene

  Suicide, Suicidal, Men

  "The Comedians". Book by Graham Greene. Part 1, Chapter 4, Section 1, 1966.

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• Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.

  Stonewall Jackson

  Crush, Army, Fighting

  "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Volume II)". Book edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, November 1884 - November 1887.

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• I want to lift the audience to the miraculous in human nature. After all, we shouldn't be here, with all the odds against us in nature. It's kind of unusual and wonderful!

  Paul Taylor

  Nature, Want, Kind

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• For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.

  Scott Adams

  Running, Goal, Long

  Scott Adams (2013). “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life”, p.33, Penguin

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• The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.

  Robert Altman

  Art, Enemy, Way

  Robert Altman, David Sterritt (2000). “Robert Altman: Interviews”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Either philosophy reinforces communal beliefs, in which case it is pointless; or else it is at odds with those beliefs, in which case it is dangerous.

  Georges Canguilhem

  Philosophy, Belief, Cases

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• When honor and truth are at odds, let truth prevail.

  Jose Bernardo

  Honor, Truth Prevails

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• I'm ready. I feel like I can't be beat. You have to feel like that being a fighter. I just feel like this is a bigger type of energy. I feel like I've beaten so many odds. I feel kind of invincible. It's going to be a good fight.

  Tavoris Cloud

  Fighting, Energy, Fighter

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• Most people want to be rich but they do not want to pay the price, in fact there are ways of becoming rich in which the odds are in the person's favor

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Pay The Price, People, Facts

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• I realized that I might not ever make it as a writer, that it might be because I wasn't good enough, or that it might be because the odds were just too long.

  Jay McInerney

  Long, Might, Good Enough

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• I feel like a young adult. In high school I never felt like my professional life and my personal life were at odds, because Rookie felt like the bridge.

  Tavi Gevinson

  Jobs, Teenager, School

  Interview with Grimes, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 11, 2014.

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• Talk about a struggling artist having to work against enormous odds ... But I love movies so much, so I'm going to do it.

  Ariel Pink

  Struggle, Artist, Movie Love

  Interview with T. Cole Rachel, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 4, 2013.

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• If you encounter someone who pronounces the t in often, odds are they're a douchebag.

  Dana Gould

  Encounters, Douchebags, Ifs

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• With world health, every life you save is a wonderful thing, so it's not this question of whether you solve it or you don't. The chance of completely solving the problems has long odds. But really, the thing is that you get to save the first child, the second child, the third child. You can just feel good about that.

  Bill Gates

  Children, Long, Feel Good

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• Our military superiority is so great - it's far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days. And so now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad... The odds are there's going to be a war and it's going to be not for very long.

  William J. Clinton

  Couple, Military, War

  "Clinton Airs Views on Iraq, Affirmative Action". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.npr.org. March 6, 2003.

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• The fact that you couldn't see Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Mountain Eagle, or that you couldn't see so many of F.W. Murnau's masterpieces, or that you couldn't see so many of Oscar Micheaux's really intriguing race melodramas, made with fierce independent spirit against all odds in '20s and '30s America. That stuff haunted me. They really did bring to life a sense of 20th Century history: cultural history, pop history, gender politics and race politics, socio economic history, all that stuff. It was bracing and instructive.

  Guy Maddin

  Independent, America, Race

  Source: thequietus.com

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• It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them."

  Mos Def

  Artist, People, Giving

  "David Bowie & Mos Def: The Style Council (2003 Cover Story)". Interview with Ben White, www.complex.com. January 11, 2016.

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• That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.

  Ralph Ellison

  Memories, Identity, Remember

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated”, p.237, Modern Library

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• It's a different mindset. Coming from where I come from, we always had to defeat the odds. We didn't have what other people had. We had to work twice as hard for everything. To be noticed to be seen. Even back then it drove me to be the best that I can be. I wanted everyone to know I was somebody you had to watch.

  Andre Berto

  People, Different, Watches

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• Public education must be viewed from the lens of providing each child with the learning environment that best meets his or her needs. If we can send a low-income child to a parochial school, knowing that his odds of attending college will increase as a result, then that should be our mission.

  Jeb Bush

  Children, School, College

  "Jeb Bush Speaks Out". Education Next Interview, educationnext.org. November 12, 2014.

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• I think you have to have a little bit of a screw loose to think that you can [become an actor] because the odds are so against you. I was just crazy enough to think I could do it.

  Linda Cardellini

  Crazy, Thinking, Actors

  "Linda Cardellini’s Return". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 10, 2012.

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• So you can get very remarkable investment results if you think more like a winning pari-mutuel player. Just think of it as a heavy odds against game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other. And you're probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It's just that simple.

  Charlie Munger

  Smart, Winning, Simple

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