Improbable Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

  Galileo Galilei

  Simple, Reality, Naked

  Galileo Galilei (2010). “Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences”, p.4, Cosimo, Inc.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual.

  Hans Jonas

  Life, Nature, Men

  Hans Jonas, Lawrence Vogel (1996). “Mortality and Morality: A Search for Good After Auschwitz”, p.157, Northwestern University Press

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• The Brigadier had no wish to shake hands with the improbable young man in the ridiculous frock-coat.

  Peter Grimwade

  Men, Hands, Wish

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• The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Book, Reading

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Creative, Fiction

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• Kyria Abrahams, former teen bride of a doomsday cult and seeker of salvation in slam poetry, tells the terribly funny story of her improbable life with candor, wit, and an unsparing eye for the perfect detail. Brilliant.

  Janice Erlbaum

  Eye, Perfect, Details

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• When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Motivational, Matter, Impossible

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• It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.

  E. T. A. Hoffmann

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• Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

  Edith Wharton

  Flower, Unattainable, Firsts

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2108, Delphi Classics

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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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• 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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