Unlikely Quotes - Page 5

• White Collar' is a show about the unlikely pairing of an FBI agent and an ex-con solving smart, glamorous, interesting and provocative crimes in a sometimes very funny way.

  Tim DeKay

  Smart, Fbi Agents, White

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• Rupert Grayson manifested a talent for survival: it was said of him that even if - unlikely contingency - he had tried to drown himself in the Thames he would have been washed up alive in the Grill Room of the Savoy.

  Hugh Massingberd

  Survival, Alive, Rooms

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• Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.

  Richard Ford

  Art, Children, Real

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• Charity in the theatre usually begins and ends with people who have a play opening the week following one's own. Their unlikely benevolence is not so much a purity of heart as the knowledge that they face a firing line with rifles aimed in exactly the same direction.

  Moss Hart

  Heart, Play, People

  moss hart (1959). “act one”

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• Once in a while there are things the brain simply refuses to accept as being true because they appear too improbable, too unlikely, too preposterous.

  Walter Abish

  Truth, Brain, Accepting

  Walter Abish (1980). “How German Is It”, p.44, New Directions Publishing

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• It's unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian... or is it? I am not at all sure.

  Mary Douglas

  Organized, Organized Religion

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• For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork.

  Neil Gershenfeld

  Smart, Technology, Needs

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• Mother Angelica is proof that we are not limited by other's perceptions, and that God sometimes calls the most unlikely people to great things.

  Raymond Arroyo

  Mother, People, Perception

  "Living With a True Mother". Interview with Kathryn Lopez, www.nationalreview.com. December 21, 2005.

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• Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.

  Francis Crick

  Synthesis, Protein, Genuine

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• Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Ideas, Trying, Produce

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• If I meet someone and discover that they're an absolute, very earnest nationalist, it's unlikely that I'm going to get much closer to them. I don't understand them. It doesn't matter where they're from, I just don't get it. I'm a multi-national kind of guy.

  William Gibson

  Guy, Matter, Kind

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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• I just became fascinated with how complex and unlikely the universe is and life is and Catholicism gives me an answer to that.

  Dean Koontz

  Giving, Answers, Life Is

  "The Rumpus Interview With Dean Koontz". Interview with Ben Pfeiffer, therumpus.net. December 21, 2015.

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• There was also a sense that if he [Obama] did not win in Iowa, that it was very unlikely that he would be able to come back and win the Democratic nomination and win the general election. It was sort of an all-or-nothing bet. The stakes were that high.

  Josh Earnest

  Winning, Iowa, Would Be

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• I like to piece together different guitarists, unlikely bedfellows. You have Jonny Greenwood playing next to Nile Rodgers on the same track, so it becomes like an orchestra of sounds.

  Bryan Ferry

  Track, Together, Sound

  "Bryan Ferry Talks New Solo Album, Roxy Music". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. October 12, 2010.

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• I ended up realizing that NASA was unlikely to get me into space, or get me to the moon or beyond, and I needed some other way to drive this.

  Peter Diamandis

  Moon, Space, Way

  Interview with Paul Hoffman, bigthink.com. January 26, 2010.

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• It's very interesting to think about the distinction with mind, which I just made in very general terms, but it can be made more profound when we think that there are many species, many creatures on earth that are very likely to have a mind, but are very unlikely to have a consciousness in the sense that you and I have.

  Antonio Damasio

  Thinking, Profound, Interesting

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. August 10, 2010.

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• I think it's reasonable to say that even thought, in all likelihood, we have slightly different experiences of reality, they are similar enough to us not to clash. In other words, I'm not, it's very unlikely, in fact, let's say impossible, for you to say the situation in which you and I are in right now, relative to the machinery that is capturing this.

  Antonio Damasio

  Reality, Thinking, Different Experiences

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, "It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me."

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Past, Bottles

  "How to Read a Poem". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

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• Winning the lottery is winning the lottery. It's highly unlikely and very unusual.

  Lori Lansens

  Winning, Unusual, Lottery

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Unlikely accomplishments are borne out of single-minded purposefulness. Future superstars don't get there by keeping part of their heart in reserve.

  John Eliot

  Heart, Accomplishment, Achievement

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• I want to see a more progressive Democratic ticket. I'm not happy with the Democratic Leadership Council's dominance of the party. And although I'm unlikely to be the person, I want Wisconsin's progressivism to influence the ticket. And we'll do better as a party if we do. We'll have more energy. We'll have a broader tent.

  Russ Feingold

  Party, Energy, Want

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild for The Progressive Magazine, www.thirdworldtraveler.com. May 2002.

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• Seems like people could behave themselves without making a calculation regarding how likely or unlikely they are to kill other people.

  Robert James Thomson

  People, Behave, Calculations

  "Dr. Gridlock". The Washington Post Live Chat, live.washingtonpost.com. February 8, 2016.

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• It seems unlikely that we're alone in the universe. But I'm pretty sure nobody's hiding any contact.

  David Duchovny

  Hiding, Contact, Seems

  "X-Files Archive: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in conversation". Interview with Nick De Semlyen, www.empireonline.com. January 1, 2013.

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• Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Exercise, Punishment, Two

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• One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change; that change is highly unlikely.

  George Lakoff

  Simple, People, Brain

  George Lakoff (2008). “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics”, p.45, Penguin

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