Probability Quotes - Page 8

• Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.

  Vinod Khosla

  Views, Entrepreneur, Decision

  4 Copy quote

• I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking.

  Damon Lindelof

  Projects, Found, Higher

  "Damon Lindelof: I did not abandon ‘Prometheus 2’". uproxx.com. March 28, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

  Isaac Watts

  Light, Hundred, Certainty

  5 Copy quote

• You must maximize the probability that someone shows up at front door of your store or website and ends up with a solved problem.

  Drew Houston

  Doors, Problem, Ends

  14 Copy quote

• Nearly everybody nowadays accepts the 'causal completeness of physics' - every physical event (or at least its probability) has a full physical cause. This leaves no room for non-physical things to make a causal difference to physical effects. But it would be absurd to deny that thoughts and feelings (and population movements and economic depressions . . .) cause physical effects. So they must be physical things.

  David Papineau

  Differences, Feelings, Events

  "Physical". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

  William Butler Yeats

  Memories, Soul, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.347, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Giving, Fundamentals, Way

  "THE SIMPLE AND THE COMPLEX Part I: THE QUANTUM AND THE QUASI-CLASSICAL with MURRAY GELL-MANN, Ph.D". Interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, www.intuitionnetwork.org.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A property in the 100-year floodplain has a 96 percent chance of being flooded in the next hundred years without global warming. The fact that several years go by without a flood does not change that probability.

  Earl Blumenauer

  Years, Doe, Next

  10 Copy quote

• The percent likelihood of a society becoming physically violent if it is physically affectionate towards its infants and tolerant of premarital sexual behavior is 2 percent. The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 125,000 to one. I am not aware of any other developmental variable that has such a high degree of predictive validity.

  James W. Prescott

  Society, Degrees, Variables

  5 Copy quote

• So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' - then you should abandon them.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Teacher, Buddhist

  8 Copy quote

• No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved.

  Mark Gibbs

  Technology, Numbers, People

  "The myth of the digital lifestyle" by Mark Gibbs, www.networkworld.com. January 9, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.

  Plato

  Science, Self, Giving

  7 Copy quote

• Everybody knows you're going to miss some. It's just the reality and the probability of it. It's the ultimate paradox for a kicker. You go out expecting to make every kick, but you also know it's probably not going to happen. So you have these two conflicting thoughts and realities. The really good kickers are the ones who can process that information. That's what I'm learning to do.

  Nate Kaeding

  Reality, Two, Missing

  18 Copy quote

• The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail.

  George Muller

  Sight, Failing, Provinces

  27 Copy quote

• It is impossible for a Die, with such determined force and direction which makes it fall on such a determined side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such a determin'd side, and therefore I call that Chance, which is nothing, but want of Art.

  John Arbuthnot

  Art, Fall, Science

  "The Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'

  Aristotle

  Events, Statistics, Should

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.473, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.

  William James

  Men, Statistics, Claims

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.304, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was our use of probability theory as logic that has enabled us to do so easily what was impossible for those who thought of probability as a physical phenomenon associated with "randomness". Quite the opposite; we have thought of probability distributions as carriers of information.

  Edwin Thompson Jaynes

  Opposites, Probability Theory, Use

  6 Copy quote

• If you look like your passport photo, in all probability you need the journey.

  Earl Wilson

  Travel, Journey, Needs

  12 Copy quote

• Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  War, Thinking, Iraq

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am now about to set seriously to work upon preparing for the press an account of my theory of Logic and Probabilities which in its present state I look upon as the most valuable if not the only valuable contribution that I have made or am likely to make to Science and the thing by which I would desire if at all to be remembered hereafter.

  George Boole

  Desire, Looks, Logic

  Letter to William Thomson, January 2, 1851.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more people you contact, the higher your sales will be because of the law of probabilities.

  Brian Tracy

  Law, People, Contact

  "Secrets of Success from Business Coach Brian Tracy". Interview with Deborah Jeanne Sergeant, homebusinessmag.com. December 07, 2015.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The difficulty in judging what type of behavior works well arises not only because a given course of action does not always produce the outcomes. Similar outcomes can occur for reasons other than the person's actions, which further complicates inferential judgment. Effects that arise independently of one's actions distort the influence of similar effects produced by the actions, but only on some occasions. Given a strong cognitive set to perceive regularities, even chance joint occurrences of events can be easily misjudged as genuine relationships of low contingent probability

  Albert Bandura

  Strong, Judging, Outcomes

  12 Copy quote

• At 55 I said the probability is I won't have another relationship. I just didn't want to start another family. Between my own bizarre criteria and taste and the fact that I'm not available for many things I thought it was unlikely. Once you know the science about it, I don't think anybody should consider being committed to a real eternal relationship until you're through something called the infatuation circle.

  Jack Nicholson

  Real, Thinking, Circles

  Source: the-talks.com

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Loss, Differences, Safety

  Richard P. Feynman (2011). “"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character”, p.238, W. W. Norton & Company

  14 Copy quote

  Show source