Odds Quotes - Page 25

• There is 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 , though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

  Michael Cunningham

  Morning, Children, Cities

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

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• Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Notebook, Christian, Names

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.82, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The danger of Iran is if you listen to what the Ayatollah is saying, to what the Mullahs are saying, rational self-preservation is not their objective. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon the odds are unacceptably high that that weapon will not be simply stockpiled, but it will be detonated over Tel Aviv, or New York, or Los Angeles.

  Ted Cruz

  New York, Self, Iran

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• The chief obstacle to success lies in the stubborn fact that if the favorable prospects of a concern are clearly apparent they are almost always reflected already in the current price of the stock. Buying such an issue is like betting on a topheavy favorite in a horse race. The chances may be on your side, but the real odds are against you.

  Benjamin Graham

  Horse, Real, Lying

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• The greatness of our Army has always been the ability of our soldiers who serve in the ranks to rise to the challenge against the odds, in the face of danger, and win.

  Julius W. Gates

  Army, Winning, Greatness

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• Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity.

  Henry Paulson

  Opposites, Growth, Environmental

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• When I'm at the greatest odds with my body, it's usually because I feel my body's betraying me, whether that's been in the past, struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn't eat what I wanted to eat, or that I couldn't get my body to do what I wanted it to do.

  Demi Moore

  Struggle, Past, Feelings

  "Demi Moore & Amanda De Cadenet: In Conversation". Interview With Amanda De Cadenet, www.harpersbazaar.com. January 4, 2012.

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• For the rest of your life you must check the box on employment applications asking the dreaded question: "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" And once you check that box, the odds are sky high that your application is going straight to the trash. Hundreds of professional licenses are off-limits to people convicted of felonies.

  Michelle Alexander

  Sky, People, Employment

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I found that if I offered to cook for a girl, my odds improved radically over simply asking a girl out. Through my efforts to attract the opposite sex, I found that not only did cooking work, but that it was actually fun.

  Alton Brown

  Girl, Sex, Fun

  The AskMen Interview, www.askmen.com.

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• As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Country, Recovery, Past

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• And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Love, Kindness, Greatness

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• I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Kings, Thinking, Role Models

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• At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he'd been a mime, odds are he'd already be dead.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Moving, Men, Circles

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• Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.

  E. O. Wilson

  Powerful, Two, World

  Interview with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. July 6, 2007.

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• I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.

  James Taylor

  Blessing, Trying, Looks

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

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• I've always been attracted to characters with insurmountable odds and obstacles, because innately, however inarticulately I've always believed that my dreams and my desires can command and bend time and space to be the things that I want them to be.

  Will Smith

  Dream, Character, Space

  Source: movieweb.com

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• There's no way I'm going to stand up for bad ingredients. We love seasonal ingredients. It's a false dichotomy to say that modern cooking is at odds with that, but some people want to have a great ingredient and no technique.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  People, Cooking, Technique

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• In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.

  Barack Obama

  Simple, Yes We Can, America

  Barack Obama, (2008). “Change We Can Believe In”, p.222, Canongate Books

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Stories, Favors

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• I think that when you're writing plays, and I think it's also true with novels, it helps to have an ear for the music of language, for what we call poetry, for the sound effects and the way that the sound can produce sensual feeling at odds with or consonant with the content of the work. Your work is also gorgeous writing. It's very unfortunate when you open a novel that everybody's loving and it's just, you know, an excruciatingly bad sentence.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.

  Terry Eagleton

  Syntax, Literature, Tone

  "A puritan at play" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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• Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared

  Ian Fleming

  Love, Appreciation, Mistake

  Ian Fleming (1953). “Casino Royale”

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• I realize the odds, and science, are against me. But science is not the total answer; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Real, Order, Miracle

  Nicholas Sparks (2011). “The Notebook”, p.7, Hachette UK

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• Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. ... If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Organization, Independence

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• There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.

  Daniel Quinn

  Lying, Feet, People

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.84, Bantam

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