Probability Quotes

“Hard work increases the probability of serendipity.”
― Ken Poirot

“What was a shadow, after all, but a shape in the moving world reduced to a projection of possibilities?”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows

“The future is certain. It is just not known.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“A distinguished writer [Siméon Denis Poisson] has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science:

'The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.'
'The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible' (equally like to happen).

From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary. Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.”
― George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought

“The greatest risk is not taking any.”
― Tim Fargo

“The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.

The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible.”
― Siméon Denis Poisson

“Stop living the life with possibilities and probabilities, live the life with certainties.”
― Amit Kalantri

“The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Peace shouldn't be an option, it must be the objective, peace shouldn't be a possibility, it must be the purpose.”
― Amit Kalantri

“And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested. Intelligent design suffers from exactly the same objection as chance. It is simply not a plausible solution to the riddle of statistical improbability. And the higher the improbability, the more implausible intelligent design becomes. Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.”
― Vannevar Bush, Endless Horizons

“The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“The greatest risk is not taking one.”
― Tim Fargo

“He who jumps for the sake of jumping will probably keep jumping until he jumps back into his own jumping ground.”
― Duop Chak Wuol

“I have stressed this distinction because it is an important one. It defines the fundamental difference between probability and statistics: the former concerns predictions based on fixed probabilities; the latter concerns the inference of those probabilities based on observed data.”
― Leonard Mlodinow

“I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division as indicated above may constitute the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity.”
― Walter S. Sutton

“Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and many calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other.”
― Abraham De Moivre, The Doctrine Of Chances: Or A Method Of Calculating The Probability Of Events In Play

“If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy things that don’t make sense.”
― Sara Sheridan, Brighton Belle

“Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable.
(At times truth may not seem probable)”
― Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

“Promise has 50% chance of happening.
At least always make 2 promises at once.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“To talk of probability is to suggest that events might happen differently from the way they do, whereas events themselves will unfold according to an inevitable path.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“One should not inquire too closely where ancient legends about the gods are concerned; many things which reason rejects acquire some color of probability once you bring a god into the story”
― Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

“Between the streams of probability & possibility, lies the timeless, spaceless realm where time gets created!”
― Vishwanath S J

“Chickens are true creatures of zen - they live only and absolutely for the moment. Their actions one particular second will not necessarily have any influence or bearing on their actions in the next second, nor are they necessarily influenced by their actions of the prior second. Chicken thoughts arrive in their tiny mad little minds like flashes of a strobe light, each light being an action, each flashing with the brilliance of a not very brilliant thing. Each action utterly random. The complete randomness of chaos. Chickens are notorious escape artists, not due to their ability to devise cunning plans as they huddle together in their coop beneath a bare light bulb, scratching out complex diagrams in the dirt, but simply out of sheet unpredictability. They are the pachinko balls of the animal kingdom, effecting their escapes through the simple device of, say, turning left for no particular reason.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.”
― Robert S. Mulliken

“It is highly probable that we choose our posture, not our problems.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Extremely unlikely events occur every moment and it is not a priori unthinkable that the evolution of life should be due to mere chance than that a particular order in a pack of cards should result from mechanical shuffling.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, Religion: If There Is No God God, The Devil & Sin

“There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“Each empty seat in the auditorium, is the probability of what you should have done and not done.”
― Rehan Waris