Improbable Quotes - Page 2

• The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Intelligent, Alternatives

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• Every river appears to consist of a main trunk, fed from a variety of branches, each running in a valley proportional to its size, and all of them together forming a system of vallies, communicating with one another, and having such a nice adjustment of their declivities that none of them join the principal valley on too high or too low a level; a circumstance which would be infinitely improbable if each of these vallies were not the work of the stream that flows in it.

  John Playfair

  Running, Nice, Hard Work

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• Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette.

  Joe Queenan

  Reading, Angel, Epic

  "One For The Books". Book by Joe Queenan, 2012.

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• In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Science, Giving

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• Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Henry Kissinger, Trustworthy, Accepting

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.1565, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.

  Richard Dawkins

  Real, Blind, Gentle

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.148, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• 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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• The proof of evolution lies in those adaptations that arise from improbable foundations.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Foundation, Evolution

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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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• It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Inspirational, Truth, Philosophy

  "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" (1892).

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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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• His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.

  Joseph Conrad

  Problem, Disappear, Inexplicable

  Joseph Conrad (2008). “Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer”, p.104, Penguin

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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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• in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Dream, Extravagance, Cases

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Cities of the Plain”, p.285, Pan Macmillan

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• What care I if it be "wild and improbable" and "lacking in literary art"? I refuse to be any longer hampered by such canons of criticism. The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me. If it does, I forgive it every other fault.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Art, Book, Forgiving

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• This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.

  Primo Levi

  Dream, Real, Past

  Primo Levi (1986). “If this is a Man: Remembering Auschwitz”

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• Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.

  Oscar Wilde

  Praying, Produce, Explanation

  Oscar Wilde (1899). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.14

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• I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Memories, Mistake, Leaving

  Michel Houellebecq (2011). “Whatever: A Novel”, p.46, Profile Books

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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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• We are a people of improbable hope.

  Barack Obama

  People

  Address to the People of Berlin, delivered 24 July 2008, Victory Column

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