Unlikely Quotes - Page 13

• It's unlikely that you'll create something scarce without doing something risky to get there.

  Seth

  Scarce

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• Freud pointed out, in his Problem of Lay Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for young analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contact. But in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him.

  Paul Goodman

  Mother, New York, Men

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (pp. 145-146), 1956.

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• Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Life, Hero, Use

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• Simply cutting the taxes for America's wealthiest families is clearly not creating the needed new jobs, and that strategy is unlikely to succeed in the future.

  Tim Johnson

  Jobs, Cutting, Creating

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• A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.

  Sam Harris

  Running, Country, Believe

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• I just said let's get some poets on tv. And when they said that sounded unlikely, I made it worse. I said, no man, I want to put a bunch of black poets on stage, too. Some Latino poets who barely speak English and Asian poets who can't believe how discriminated against they are. It was luck nad being in the right place. I wasn't saying nothing somebody else wasn't saying but they wouldn't hear it from them.

  Russell Simmons

  Believe, Men, Speak English

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Structure is important in film, but there's often structure to be found in the most unlikely of places! It's quite possible to build a structured story and retain idiosyncrasy.

  Peter Jackson

  Important, Stories, Film

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• If there’s any other message in this to readers, it’s in these two characters as icons of hope, that it doesn’t make any difference where you come from, or where you went to school, or who you are, there’s hope. That a kid from Jersey with Superman as the icon that kept him alive for years would one day end up writing the character is as absoutely unlikely as it is utterly inevitable. And if that’s true for me, it’s true for you, if you follow your dreams and your passions in full flight. Don’t give up. No Limits. It’s never too late to learn to fly.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Dream, Giving Up, Passion

  "J. Michael Stracyznski takes over Superman and Wonder Woman" by Glenn Hauman, www.comicmix.com. March 8, 2010.

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• The monomaniac is unlikely to succeed. Most leave only their bleached bones in the roadless desert. But the rest of us, with our multiple interests instead of a single mission, are certain to fail and have no impact at all.

  Peter Drucker

  Impact, Desert, Succeed

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• How funny it is that the most unlikely person sometimes becomes your ally.

  Simone Elkeles

  Allies, Sometimes, Persons

  Simone Elkeles (2010). “Perfect Chemistry”, p.274, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• with his customary crooked smile, “are just too unlikely to dwell upon.

  Cassandra Clare

  Fallen Angels, Crooked Smiles, Clary Fray

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1350, Simon and Schuster

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• She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you. You can’t be a cop.” “Not a cop.” “Federal agent?” “FBI.” “Even more unlikely.” “J. Edgar rolls over in his grave every day, but that’s the way it is.

  Sandra Brown

  Believe, Agents, Way

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• Religion's greatest "sin" lies in displacing human endeavor, thought, time, resources and efforts from this world, our only world, in order to exalt a highly unlikely, unknowable, unseeable, unprovable and unbelievable pretend afterworld. The only afterlife that ought to concern us is leaving our descendants (along with the other animals and life we share our planet with) a secure and pleasant future.

  Annie Laurie Gaylor

  Lying, Animal, Order

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• When the people of a nation stop communicating, they lose the common purpose that made them great. Their cities become ghost towns. People live aimlessly because they have no cause for which they are willing to die. The cry of the populace is 'Just leave me alone'. Perhaps the ultimate hell is that the wish will be granted. It is not unlikely that our own nation will collapse not through an explosive roar, but through a deafening silence. This silence must be broken in our generation. We may never get another chance.

  Jeff Myers

  Cities, Common Purpose, Our Generation

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• I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way.

  Charlie Munger

  Laughter, Nice, Men

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• Think light! Try to impart a feeling of lightness to the body. Think light. This can be achieved by mentally extending yourself outwards from the centre of the body, i.e., think tall. Think not just of raising your arms but of extending them outwards and when you are holding them still, think again of reaching still further away from your body. Do not think of yourself as a small compressed suffering thing. Think of yourself as graceful and expanding - no matter how unlikely it may seem at the time.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Thinking, Light, Feelings

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• I'm a reasonable kind of guy. If I hear something that seems to make sense, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. If the alternative explanation has to be pounded into shape before it fits the mould of our experience, it seems to me that it's unlikely to be true.

  Frank Schatzing

  Giving, Guy, Doubt

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• With caution judge of probability. Things deemed unlikely, e'en impossible, experience oft hath proved to be true.

  William Shakespeare

  Wisdom, Judging, Impossible

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• When you have eliminated the impossible, what is left, no matter how unlikely, is the truth.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Matter, Impossible, Left

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• I'm never impossible. The most I ever allow myself is to be somewhat unlikely.

  Orson Scott Card

  Impossible

  Orson Scott Card (2016). “The Memory of Earth and The Call of Earth”, p.109, Macmillan

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• The best thing government can do now is get out of the way and let small businesses innovate, hire and grow. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen unless Washington stops increasing regulations, taxes and other blocks to business growth.

  Oliver DeMille

  Block, Government, Growth

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• It is very unlikely that the computer will displace the books, except in areas where we need information speedily.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Book, Needs, Information

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• I kind of like carbon taxes because we already know how to apply them. We already have apparatus in place. When we talk about these other solutions - like a billion tons of iron filings in the ocean or putting sunshades between us and the sun - they're huge. We have no idea if they will work. We have no idea what their nasty consequences might be. And it's unlikely we can do them anyway.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  Ocean, Ideas, Iron

  Interview with Jesse Finfrock, www.motherjones.com. 2008.

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• In real life a right-angled triangle is very unlikely to have a square on its hypotenuse.

  H. F. Ellis

  Real, Squares, Triangles

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• By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The dread equation is a simplification, but it's a way to explain why we fear something so much when it is so unlikely. Part of it is the lack of control. That's why we're more scared of plane crashes than car crashes even though we know rationally which is more dangerous.

  Amanda Ripley

  Smart, Car, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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