Probability Quotes - Page 12

• According to PhD astrophysicists and qualified American science professors, the odds of the more than 2,500 prophecies found in the Bible being fulfilled by chance are 1 with 2,000 zeros after it. According to the mathematical science of probability, if a number has more than 50 zeros after it, the odds of that happening by chance is virtually impossible. This is irrefutable proof that the Bible is inspired by God!

  Hugh Ross

  Odds, Numbers, Phds

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• The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.

  S. T. Joshi

  Meaningful, Religious, Atheist

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• We come finally, however, to the relation of the ideal theory to real world, or "real" probability. If he is consistent a man of the mathematical school washes his hands of applications. To someone who wants them he would say that the ideal system runs parallel to the usual theory: "If this is what you want, try it: it is not my business to justify application of the system; that can only be done by philosophizing; I am a mathematician". In practice he is apt to say: "try this; if it works that will justify it".

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Running, Real, School

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• The highest historical probability can be adduced in support of the proposition that, if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual system of the moral world.

  Edward Everett

  Faith, Spiritual, Support

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• The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store's focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business.

  Gabriel Zaid

  Book, Focus, Shrewdness

  Gabriel Zaid “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance”, Paul Dry Books

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• You travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing ... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.

  Agatha Christie

  Dream, Loneliness, Home

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• Wherever you observe persecution, there is more than a probability that truth lies on il the persecuted side.

  Hugh Latimer

  Lying, Sides, Persecution

  "The sermons of Right Reverend Father in God".

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• It's not unlikely that God would lie that would be a matter of probability. It is impossible for God to lie.

  James MacDonald

  Lying, Would Be, Matter

  James MacDonald (2011). “Always True: God's 5 Promises When Life Is Hard”, p.60, Moody Publishers

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• Almost all thinking people agree that you should not have probability 1 (or 0) for any event, other than one demonstrable by logic, like 2 x 2 = 4.

  Dennis Lindley

  Thinking, People, Events

  "Understanding Uncertainty". Book by Dennis Lindley (Chapter 6 "Bayes Rule", p. 91), 2006.

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• Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.

  Samuel Richardson

  Believe, Doubt, Merit

  Samuel Richardson (1751). “Letters and passages restored from the original manuscripts of the History of Clarissa. To which is subjoined, a collection of such of the moral and instructive sentiments ... contained in the History, as are presumed to be of general use and service ... Published for the sake of doing justice to the purchasers of the first two editions of that work”, p.233

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• The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

  Max Horkheimer

  Order, Law, Names

  "Critical Theory: Selected Essays" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 150), 1982.

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• Okay, look at it this way: if the evening news has a very high probability of being accurate, then it's highly improbable that they would inaccurately report the numbers chosen in the lottery. That counterbalances any improbability in the choosing of those numbers, so you're quite rational to believe in this highly improbable event.

  William Lane Craig

  Believe, Numbers, Events

  "The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity". Book by Lee Strobel, 2000.

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• According to theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent upon God's beliefs, desires and creative acts. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural considerations; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude.

  Quentin Smith

  Creative, Religion, Desire

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• You are completely at choice who you will be today in your interactions with others. Compassionate, kind, giving and forgiving will create one set of probabilities; angry, judgmental, critical and defensive will create another one altogether.

  Marianne Williamson

  Inspirational, Interaction With Others, Giving

  FaceBook post by Marianne Williamson from Apr 27, 2013

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• The probability of a fatal nuclear detonation is greater now than at any time during the Cold War. As the Russian military deteriorates, and as rogue governments and terrorists seek to acquire nuclear capabilities, the threat continues to grow.

  Alan Cranston

  Military, War, Government

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• The idea is to buy when the probability is greatest that the market is going to advance.

  Martin Zweig

  Ideas

  "Martin Zweig Growth Investing Screen: How does it work?", www.businessinsider.com. May 7, 2011.

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• It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.

  Thomas Nagel

  Together, Example, Alternatives

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• The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.

  Ernst Mayr

  Believe, Civilization, Issues

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• I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault.

  Branch Rickey

  Courage, Children, Want

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• Is it conceivable that a newly emancipated people can soar to the heights of liberty, and, unlike Icarus, neither have its wings melt nor fall into an abyss? Such a marvel is inconceivable and without precedent. There is no reasonable probability to bolster our hopes.

  Simon Bolivar

  Fall, Wings, People

  Simón Bolívar, José Luis Salcedo-Bastardo (1983). “The hope of the universe”, United Nations Educational

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• In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Country, People, Rich

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• In the financial system we have today, with less risk concentrated in banks, the probability of systemic financial crises may be lower than in traditional bank-centered financial systems

  Timothy Geithner

  Risk, May, Today

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• I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

  Max Frisch

  Believe, Fate, Used

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• The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.

  Atul Gawande

  Opportunity, Medicine, Way

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science”, p.251, Profile Books

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• I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

  Lord Byron

  Math, Two, Giving

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