Randomness Quotes

• Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

  Eric Hoffer

  Creativity, Order, Chaos

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• Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.

  Ben Casnocha

  Ben Casnocha (2015). “My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley”, p.87, John Wiley & Sons

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• So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

  Sidney Poitier

  Determined, Pure, Seems

  "What does randomness look like?" by Aatish Bhatia, www.wired.com. December 21, 2012.

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• Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Mistake, Civilization

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Stone Gods”, p.78, Penguin UK

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• Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

  James Gleick

  Lying, Care, Patterns

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• This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Risk, Illusion, Bad Things

  "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder". Book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012.

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• Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

  Aristotle

  Motivational, Wise, Intelligent

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• The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Inspirational, Science, Light

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• There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

  Harlan Coben

  Fate, Certain, Universe

  Harlan Coben (2008). “Hold Tight”, p.289, Penguin

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• When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Dangerous, Stuck, Impasse

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.102, Random House

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• Real randomness requires an infinite amount of information.

  Tristan Perich

  Real, Information, Infinite

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Order, Pseudo, Embrace

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.25, Random House

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• Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random

  Donald Knuth

  Numbers, Method, Should

  Donald E. Knuth (2014). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms”, p.25, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Randomness works well in search sometimes better than humans.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Sometimes, Wells, Humans

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.103, Random House

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• Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Feelings, Confusing, World

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Chance Riches", p. 342, 1983.

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• I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.

  Peter Cameron

  Thinking, People, Important

  Peter Cameron (2009). “Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel”, p.159, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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• Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

  John von Neumann

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

  "Various techniques used in connection with random digits" by John von Neumann in "Monte Carlo Method" edited by A.S. Householder, G.E. Forsythe and H.H. Germond, 1951.

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• Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

  Douglas Coupland

  Letting Go, Decision, Hardest

  "Microserfs". Book by Douglas Coupland, June, 1995.

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• If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Mean, Chaos, Ifs

  Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham (2001). “Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness”, p.59, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophical, Order, Principles

  Stanislaw Lem (1996). “Highcastle: A Remembrance”, Mariner Books

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• Randomness is the true foundation of mathematics.

  Gregory Chaitin

  Foundation, Mathematics

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• Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Differences, Way

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.87, Random House

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• Randomness has an incredibly powerful place in our culture. If you think about it, you can see it driving the algorithms that run our information economy, patterns that make up the traffic of our cities, and on over to the way the stars and galaxies formed.

  DJ Spooky

  Running, Stars, Powerful

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• We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.

  Viggo Mortensen

  Fate, Guy, Suffering

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• Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act - if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Behaviour, Outcomes, Lasts

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