Odds Quotes - Page 16

• And if ten percent of men are gay and twenty percent of men are Chinese, what are the odds that a men chosen at random spends his free time and mealtime while on his knees.

  Bo Burnham

  Funny, Humor, Gay

  Song: New Math, Album: Bo Burnham

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• Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.

  Mark Twain

  Education, Inspirational Life, Fighting

  Mark Twain, Albert Bigelow Paine (1923). “The Writings of Mark Twain”

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• The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.

  Bertrand Russell

  Race, Survival, Three

  Interview in "Playboy", 10, No. 3, 42, (March 1963) in "One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture" by Kenneth Rose, (p. 39), 2004.

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• What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather?

  Charles Dickens

  Friendship, Fire, Wings

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• The tough decisions that a president has to make in the Oval Office are in no way related to the capability of a person to do well on television. On the other hand, the capability of a person to project favorably on television enhances that person's odds of being elected so he can serve in the Oval Office. So you can't ignore the talents, one, to be very effective on television, and on the other hand, to be very effective as an operating president.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Hands, Office, Decision

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Believe, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.379, Penguin

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• A deep man believes that the evil eye can whither, the heart's blessing can heal, and that love can overcome all odds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Love You, Heart

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• Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Hard Work, Opportunity, Cities

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility"”, p.209, Random House

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• There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.

  Michael Cunningham

  Inspirational, Giving, Expectations

  Michael Cunningham (1998). “The Hours: A Novel”, p.225, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

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• The reason welfare is bad is not because it costs too much, nor because it "undermines the work ethic," but because it is intrinsically at odds with the way human beings come to live satisfying lives.

  Charles A. Murray

  Work Ethic, Liberty, Cost

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• Ain't nothing better, we beat the odds together.

  Shania Twain

  Success, Sports, Together

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• The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work. Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Science, Past, Self

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• It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.

  E. B. White

  Sky, Cities, Moments

  E.B. White (2011). “Here is New York”, p.30, New York Review of Books

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• "Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.

  Dean Spade

  Xenophobia, Writing, Top Down

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

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• We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend.

  Jeffrey Rowland

  Reading, Positivity, Odds Against You

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• Before the first atomic bomb test, scientists took the time to calculate whether the blast would ignite the nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere and incinerate us all. The risk was low and the test went off, but Rees wonders what the odds would have had to be to discourage the bomb makers.

  Dennis Overbye

  Funny, Science, Technology

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• To be true to one's self is the ultimate test in life. To have courage and the sensitivity to follow your hidden dreams and stand tall against the odds that are bound to fall in your path. Life is too short and precious to be dealt with in any other fashion. This thought I hold dear to my heart and I always try to be true to myself and others that I encounter along the way.

  Flo Hyman

  Dream, Volleyball, Fashion

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• Many changes have taken place but one change remains the same that is your Task & Duty . You are required to ensure the security of this country against all the odds .What does that means to you ? It means you should have to fight & fight to win , there is no roof for the losers . If you lose don't come back , you will have disgraced the country & the country won't accept you

  Sam Manekshaw

  Country, Taken, Mean

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• My personal opinion is that truth, like honesty and non-harmfulness, often are at odds with one another.

  Ezra Miller

  Honesty, Personal Opinions, Opinion

  Source: collider.com

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• They put on fresh gloves and got back to business. Jazz wiped up the blood splatters in the freezer and tossed the tissues in with Howie’s waste. It bothered him that he was leaving evidence behind without some sort of oxygenated bleach, those blood splatters would still show up under Luminol. Of course, the odds of anyone deciding to spray down the morgue freezer and switch on an ultraviolet light were pretty minimal, so it’s not like it was evidence that anyone would ever find or use. Still: Billy Dent’s First Commandment was “Thou shalt not leave evidence.

  Barry Lyga

  Light, Blood, Leaving

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• If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Mother, Law, Understanding

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.349, Random House

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• Sometimes I think Ben is right, that the fantasy world is better because reality sucks...but then I look at Nikki and I believe that we can beat the odds.

  Simone Elkeles

  Believe, Reality, Thinking

  Simone Elkeles (2012). “Chain Reaction”, p.260, Simon and Schuster

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• I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Two, Silence, Done

  Diary entry. "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States". Book edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, November 20, 1872.

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• Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.

  George Berkeley

  Lying, Men, Competition

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• Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor.

  Charlie Munger

  Moving, Discipline, Investing

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