Unlikely Quotes - Page 11

• Jace suggested that the cast of "Gilligan's Island" could go do something anatomically unlikely with themselves.

  Cassandra Clare

  Islands, Jace, Casts

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Ashes”, p.243, Simon and Schuster

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• Ah," said the magus, understanding at once. "I see that he means to be prepared if he meets him again." "Surely that's unlikely," said Sounis. "I don't think unlikely means to him what it does to the rest of us," said the magus.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Mean, Thinking, Understanding

  Megan Whalen Turner (2010). “A Conspiracy of Kings”, Greenwillow

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• Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

  Richard Dawkins

  Past, Quality, Made

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.129, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.

  Hilary Mantel

  People, Different, World

  "A life of Biggles" by Hilary Mantel, www.theguardian.com. December 11, 2009.

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• You run risks. That's the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny's whims.

  Roberto Bolano

  Running, Destiny, Risk

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• That's what you get for telling the truth. Someone calls you a liar. Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Liars, Lying, People

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 1-5”, p.188, Penguin

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• But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

  Mark Haddon

  Want Something, Said, Stills

  Mark Haddon (2012). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Vintage Children's Classics”, p.32, Random House

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• I thought about how unlikely it was I would ever meet any guy,fall in love, get married, have babies. Especially since I was going to spend the rest of my life in the cellar, where, in the not too distant future, I'd turn into a toadstool. I hoped I'd be the poisonous variety.

  Susan Beth Pfeffer

  Baby, Falling In Love, Guy

  Susan Beth Pfeffer (2015). “The Life As We Knew It Collection”, p.563, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Mab turned back to me and eyed me up and down. She quirked one eyebrow, very slightly, somehow conveying layers of disapproval toward multiple aspects of my appearance, conduct, and situation, and said, 'Finally.' 'There’s been a lot on my mind,' I replied. 'It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten,' Queen Mab replied. 'Improve your mind.'

  Jim Butcher

  Queens, Eyebrows, Mind

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• You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent.This is unlikely.After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.

  This is quotes copyright © By Pumpkin Limited

  Ram Dass

  Inspirational, Clouds, Enlightenment

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• What finally scuppered Napoleon's Europe was of course the fatal combination of the English Channel and the Russian winter; the same unlikely partnership that also did for Hitler's Europe.

  Andrew Roberts

  Winter, Europe, History

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• Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course, the study of stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in biology, but I think it is unlikely that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in healthcare for a long time.

  Robert Winston

  Thinking, Cells, Britain And America

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• Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

  Julian Baggini

  Morality, Emotion, Seems

  "Calm? Why should I be calm?" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. March 2, 2009.

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• I sometimes find reality far more fantastical and unlikely than what I could just make up.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Reality, Sometimes

  "From 'Moloch' to "Superman Earth One Vol. 2' J. Michael Straczynski Interview". Interview with Valerie Gallaher, www.mtv.com. November 12, 2012.

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• Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Doors, Secret, Source

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• My homeland of Belarus is an unlikely place for an Internet revolution. The country, controlled by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, was once described by Condoleezza Rice as 'the last outpost of tyranny in Europe.'

  Evgeny Morozov

  Country, Europe, President

  "How dictators watch us on the web" by Bruce Sterling, www.wired.com. December 10, 2009.

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• But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

  Marisha Pessl

  Sweet, School, Narrative Structure

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.83, Penguin

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• She might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment. Look carefully at that teacher. Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Don't let that put you off. It could be part of cleverness. I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But--here comes the big "but"--not impossible.

  Roald Dahl

  Teacher, Reading, School

  Roald Dahl (2007). “The Witches”, p.11, Penguin

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• If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Ignorance, Light, Intellectual

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• Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

  Stephen King

  Falling In Love, Book, Responsibility

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• I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.

  Isaac Asimov

  Army, Fighting, Night

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• John asked me to dance and I nearly died. Bingo! I then amazed myself by being very cool, calm and collected outwardly-inside I was out of this world. The dance was slow and smoochy. I was aloof and John, I think, was slightly embarrassed. It was all very painful and beautiful at the same time. The remaining students were looking on with puzzled expressions at such an unlikely combination.

  Cynthia Lennon

  Beautiful, Thinking, Expression

  Cynthia Lennon (1980). “A twist of Lennon”, Avon Books

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• It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Supposing That, Mind, Brain

  "Possible worlds, and other essays". Book by J. B. S. Haldane, 1927.

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• Fiction, with its preference for what is small and might elsewhere seem irrelevant; its facility for smuggling us into another skin and allowing us to live a new life there; its painstaking devotion to what without it might go unnoticed and unseen; its respect for contingency, and the unlikely and odd; its willingness to expose itself to moments of low, almost animal being and make them nobly illuminating, can deliver truths we might not otherwise stumble on.

  David Malouf

  Animal, Skins, Unseen

  David Malouf (2011). “The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World”, p.87, Black Inc.

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• Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another.

  Shirley Ann Grau

  Life, Tree, Trying

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