Probability Quotes - Page 14

• Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

  Sidney Hook

  Religious, Atheist, Order

  Sidney Hook (1991). “The Quest for Being”

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• The reality, as I have come to understand it, is that the future is not fixed, and that therefore it cannot be reliably predicted. Consciousness interacts with vast archetypal fields of possibility and probability. What actually happens is the result of the collision of both forces.

  Steven Forrest

  Reality, Fields, Consciousness

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• The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.

  Ilya Prigogine

  Zero, Knowledge, Would Be

  "100,000 Galaxies: What quest for alien 'supercivilizations' really tells us" by Michael Guillen, www.foxnews.com. April 25, 2015.

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• The most important thing you can do individually and organizationally is to pay attention to your own creativity. Sports psychologists call this muscle memory or paying attention to your perfect performance. In your own life you can notice when you do something that works right for you and celebrate it. The more you do this, the greater the probability that you will act creatively in future situations.

  Michael Ray

  Sports, Memories, Creativity

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

  Richard Dawkins

  Reason, Consideration, Existence

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Believe, Negative, Genius

  Augusten Burroughs (2012). “This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.”, p.151, Macmillan

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• It is, I believe, justifiable to make the generalization that anything an organic chemist can synthesize can be made without him. All he does is increase the probability that given reactions will 'go.' So it is quite reasonable to assume that given sufficient time and proper conditions, nucleotides, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids will arise by reactions that, though less probable, are as inevitable as those by which the organic chemist fulfills his predictions. So why not self-duplicating virus-like systems capable of further evolution?

  George Wells Beadle

  Believe, Science, Self

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• Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, May, Tests

  Thomas Carlyle (1864). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays ...”, p.75

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• The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 to 10340,000,000.... The size of this figure is truly staggering, since there are only supposed to be approximately 10 electrons in the whole universe!

  Harold Morowitz

  Size, Chance, Evolution

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• A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escape clauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that the probability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude from classical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated

  Sidney W. Fox

  Zero, Believe, Self

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• Contrary to the popular notion that only creationism relies on the supernatural, evolutionism must as well, since the probabilities of random formation of life are so tiny as to require a 'miracle' for spontaneous generation tantamount to a theological argument.

  Chandra Wickramasinghe

  Miracle, Tiny, Generations

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• Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered - one does not usually lead to the other - but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the 20th century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Gun, Reality, Government

  "Armed against genocide" by Glenn Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2006.

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• People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Hands, Order

  Isaac Asimov (1976). “The planet that wasn't”, Doubleday Books

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• Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Mistake, Lying, Air

  Jerome K. Jerome (2006). “Jerome K. Jerome: 14 Books in 1”, p.55, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• However, the small probability of a similar encounter [of the earth with a comet], can become very great in adding up over a huge sequence of centuries. It is easy to picture to oneself the effects of this impact upon the Earth. The axis and the motion of rotation changed; the seas abandoning their old position to throw themselves toward the new equator; a large part of men and animals drowned in this universal deluge, or destroyed by the violent tremor imparted to the terrestrial globe.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Science, Animal, Men

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• The earth in its rapid motion round the sun possesses a degree of living force so vast that, if turned into the equivalent of heat, its temperature would be rendered at least one thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron, and the globe on which we tread would in all probability be rendered equal in brightness to the sun itself.

  James Prescott Joule

  Science, Iron, Would Be

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• Regarding the air raid over Los Angeles it was learned by Army G2 that Rear Admiral Anderson...recovered an unidentified airplane off the coast of California...with no bearing on conventional explanation. This Headquarters has come to the determination that the mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and, according to secret intelligence sources, they are in all probability of interplanetary origin.

  George C. Marshall

  Determination, Airplane, Army

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• I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing is very very low.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Lows, Creator

  "'Outspoken atheist' Dawkins admits he is agnostic" by Tim Edwards, www.theweek.co.uk. February 24, 2012.

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• As I have heard, since my arrival at this place, a circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter. But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!

  George Washington

  Horse, Powerful, Opportunity

  Washington Irving, George Washington (1904). “Life of George Washington”

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• Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.

  Fannie Hurst

  Perseverance, Struggle, Book

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• Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!

  Vera Nazarian

  Clouds, Patterns, Different

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• Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Rome, Fossils, Causes

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.34, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70

  N. T. Wright

  Fall, Historical, Jerusalem

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• Do not mistake probability for truth, for it is a notorious liar.

  Robert Breault

  Truth, Mistake, Liars

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• Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

  James Anthony Froude

  Philosophy, Doubt, Philosopher

  Short Studies on Great Subjects Calvinism (p. 51)

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