Improbable Quotes

• The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.

  James Whistler

  Class, Two, Nurse

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• As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions.

  Al Gore

  Inspirational, Confusing, Everyday

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• One should always be a little improbable.

  Oscar Wilde

  Littles, Consciousness, Should

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Miscellanies”, p.173, Oscar Wilde

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• Anything you want to do is possible; fear is not meant to prevent but to motivate your heart into the life you naturally think is improbable.

  Craig Stone

  Fear, Heart, Thinking

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• The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.

  Douglas Adams

  Integrity, Impossible, Kind

  Douglas Adams (2014). “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.130, Simon and Schuster

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• With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

  Aristotle

  Art, Requirements, Impossible

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• We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.

  J. William Fulbright

  Change, Thinking, World

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• The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.

  James Surowiecki

  Important, Groupthink, Dissent

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.37, Anchor

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• That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable.

  Aristotle

  Impossible

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• Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Men, Religion

  Epigrams: Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young Sebastian Melmoth

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• Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

  Richard Dawkins

  Simple, Difficult, Science And Religion

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• The catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented - and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

  Al Gore

  Threatening Us, Climate, Catastrophe

  Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, delivered 10 December 2007, Oslo, Norway

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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Faith, Freedom, Believe

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 14 (1922)

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• Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Cousin, Successful, Science

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Fiction, Stage

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 3, sc. 4, l. [142]

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• The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.

  Douglas Adams

  Ideas, Facts, Fit

  Douglas Adams (2016). “Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.358, Simon and Schuster

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• Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily improbable arrangements of matter, with many ways for things to go wrong and only a few ways for things to go right. We are certain to die, and smart enough to know it. Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can ascertain.

  Steven Pinker

  Smart, Makeup, Judging

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• She gave him a wan smile. "And then you came, Eragon. You and Saphira. After hope had deserted me and I was about to be taken to Galbatorix in Uru'baen, a Rider appeared to rescue me. A rider and a dragon!" "And Morzan's son," he said. "Both of Morzan's sons." "Describe it how you will, it was such an improbable rescue, I occasionally think that I did go mad and that I've imagined everything since.

  Christopher Paolini

  Taken, Son, Thinking

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• I thought of New York as a free city, like one of those prewar nests of intrigue and licentiousness where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter in a tangle of improbable juxtapositions. I had never gotten around to changing my nationality from the one assigned me at birth, but I would have declared myself a citizen of New York City had such a stateless state existed, its flag a solid black.

  Luc Sante

  New York, Cities, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Plot, Poet

  'Poetics' ch. 24, 1460a

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• My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

  Barack Obama

  Love, Believe, Blessed

  2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 27 July 2004, Fleet Center, Boston

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• Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Wealth, Prosperity, Finance

  "The Sydney Morning Herald" Newspaper, May 22, 1982.

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• And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of 'The Book of Mormon,' the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central's 'South Park,' are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike.

  James Wolcott

  Team, Book, Moon

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• The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Class, Two

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “Epigrams”, p.60, BoD – Books on Demand

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• So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

  Christopher Reeve

  Positive, Inspiring, Graduation

  Christopher Reeve (1998). “Still Me”, Random House Incorporated

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